


Hux Aurumque

by libertyelyot



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: AU, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Smut, Dark side Anglican clergy, F/M, OK probably more than a bit, Pretty cracky tbh, a bit kinky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-07 17:21:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 30,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8809426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/libertyelyot/pseuds/libertyelyot
Summary: In the shadow of Winbury Cathedral, your Christmas market stall is doing brisk business - until you become entangled with the cathedral's new Dean, Dr Armitage Hux, and embroiled in his power struggle with Archdeacon Benedict Solo. Carolling, sparring, ice-skating, seduction and the consumption of mulled wine ensue, but will you find out whether a heart beats beneath those clergy-black robes?(N.B. I've written the actual story in first rather than second person, so as not to drive myself mad.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, I am SO SORRY about the previous unfinished fic. I went on holiday, came back to a mountain of work and by the time it cleared, I'd just lost the thread and couldn't get it back.
> 
> But tis the season for one of my very favourite guilty pleasures - an AU Christmas fic.
> 
> Basically it's a present to myself, but if anyone else is reading, just a quick note about the setting.
> 
> My knowledge of Anglican clergy hierarchy comes straight from the pages of Trollope's Barchester novels, so I might be well out of my depth here. However, just for reference:
> 
> The Bishop oversees the diocese (i.e. the spiritual well-being of all the Anglicans in a particular area). The Dean oversees the cathedral. An Archdeacon looks after all the churches in a subdivision of the diocese. A verger is involved with the day-to-day goings-on of the cathedral.
> 
> Oh, and the title - taken from a contemporary Christmas piece by Eric Whitacre, Lux Aurumque, meaning 'Light and Gold'.
> 
> That dealt with, it's a chilly evening in December, about a week before Christmas, and your life is about to take a very unexpected turn...

“You’d better make sure he doesn’t see that. He won’t like it.”

The Christmas market crowds have thinned out, the last skaters slipping and shrieking off the melting rink at its centre. Now that I don’t have a woolly-hatted steam-breathing hydra pressing into my little wooden hut, there is time to grab a glühwein and a bratwurst from the ‘food village’ and pass the time of day with my neighbours.

Rey, from the stall on my right, is expressing reservations about my latest masterpiece. My stall sells hand drawn and painted Christmas cards –  cheery festive scenes, mostly inspired by the local surroundings. But what she is looking at now is something different; a caricature I dashed off in a spare moment earlier in the day.

“Looks like him, though.” Finn, on my left, takes a break from rearranging clove-scented pot-pourri bags and peers over Rey’s shoulder. “Specially that evil eye. Did you see him earlier on, trying to get through those schoolkids to the vestry door? Thought he was going to punch them out of the way.”

I look up at the cathedral tower, illuminated against a starry deep-velvet sky, then back down at my caricature. The figure is tall, thin, black-clad and pale-faced. What brings him to life is the vivid orange of his hair and the intense quality of his stare, which seems to accuse the viewer of every iniquity known to man. A speech bubble coming from his incongruously pouty lips says simply, “Matthew 21:12-13.”

“What’s that mean?” asks Finn.

“It’s the bit of the bible he was going on about at that meeting,” I tell him. “’ _And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,_

 _And said unto them, it is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it into a den of thieves.’_ ”

“Impressive bible scholarship,” says Rey.

“Oh, no, I looked it up after that meeting,” I reply. “Just to make sure it was really in there.”

“Why doesn’t anyone sell doves around here?” Finn grins. “Could be a good market for them. Especially turtle doves. The twelve days of Christmas and all that.”

“I don’t think live produce was included in the terms of the license,” I tell him, grinning back. “Still, at least we _got_ the license in the end. I seriously thought he might manage to block it.”

“Yeah, I don’t understand why he’s so anti.” Rey shakes her head. “The old Dean had no problem with us. Every cathedral city in the country has a Christmas market these days.”

“Why is he even the Dean?” Finn wants to know. “He’s like, twelve years old or something. I thought you had to be well ancient to get that gig.”

“I know, it’s weird,” exclaims Rey. “I was talking to that verger woman yesterday, and apparently there’s this new Archdeacon too who’s also really young and frightens all the local vicars to death. Massively evangelical, does all that speaking in tongues and all that. But the Dean doesn’t approve of that either, so they don’t really get on.”

“Does the Dean approve of anything?” I wonder. I wish I didn’t have this compulsion to talk about him, to be honest. I also wish I didn’t have this kind of squirmy feeling in my stomach when I think about him and the way he looked at me at that meeting. Ugh. Go away, inconvenient physical attraction.

“Doesn’t look like it,” says Rey. “But since nobody’s seen the Bishop in months, he’s pretty much in charge.”

“Where is the Bishop then?” Finn starts packing his dried orange and chilli wreaths away as the cathedral bell tolls the hour.

“Holed up in the palace, some kind of long-term sickness,” shrugs Rey. “Nobody’s quite sure. Apparently the new Dean and Archdeacon spend a lot of time up there though, so he must still be alive.”

“Do you think they did some kind of joint speaking-in-tongues evil-eye thing that’s put him out of action so they can take over?” I ask, only half joking, since the Dean really does seem the type who could do something like that.

“If they did anything, they wouldn’t have done it together,” says Rey, glowing with the pleasure of being able to spread this high quality gossip. “Because they seriously can’t _stand_ each other. That blonde verger told me herself.”

“Did I hear my name taken in vain?” A female voice booms out from the darkness behind us. Before I can react, she’s snatched the caricature from my hand. I stare at her, speechless with dismay, while she laughs heartily. “Oh, this is very good. _Very_ good. It’s him to the life. Can I buy it from you?”

“It’s, er, not for sale,” I mutter, which is true. I had plans to bring it out at quiet moments, sigh, then hide it away again. If I sell it, I’ll have to draw another.

“Oh, pretty please. I’ll give you fifty pounds for it.”

“Fifty?” Blimey. My cards have been going for five to ten pounds apiece. Twenty for the full-sized watercolours. “Wouldn’t you be better off putting that in the collection plate?”

She gives me a hard stare which, coming from a woman of her stature, does a lot to wear down my resistance.

“Don’t worry, I’ve made substantial donations to good causes this Christmas season,” she says. “And now I want to spend a little bit on myself. Go on. It’s so good.”

“Look, you have to promise you won’t show it to anyone.”

“Oh, I won’t. I promise. I don’t want to get you into trouble. I know how hard you had to argue your point to get this market licensed this year. Besides, who’d know it was you that drew it?”

“Um, anyone that had seen my work?”

“Rubbish, there are dozens of artists selling here. Nobody’ll know it was you. Here.” She reaches into a deep pocket somewhere inside her wine-red robes and pulls out a handful of notes. She presses them into my hand, chuckles again at the caricature and shoves it into her inner pocket. “Well, I’d best be off. Got to do the door for tonight’s peformance of _Messiah_. Catch you all later.”

She sails off into the night, leaving me chewing my lip.

“She wouldn’t show it to anyone, would she?” I ask Rey for reassurance.

Rey chews her lip back at me.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” she says. “Rumour has it she’s _very_ friendly with that charismatic Archdeacon. I bet she wouldn’t be able to resist showing him.”

“Shit, seriously?” I contemplate chasing after her, telling her to shove her fifty quid, but given she’s about twice my size, this doesn’t seem a practical course either. “Oh God.”

“Ah, don’t worry.” Rey is packing away her Christmas decorations, cleverly fashioned from old junk and recycled materials. “It’s just a picture. What can he do about it, even if he does see it? It’s not exactly illegal to draw pictures of people.”

“No, no, I guess you’re right.” I start bundling up my unsold cards with elastic bands. From inside the giant grey cathedral walls, I can hear the faint strains of a baroque string orchestra.

“ _Comfort ye_ ,” sings a mellow tenor voice. “ _Comfort ye, my people._ ”

If only it were that simple.

*

The next day is cold. We stand and shiver under an iron-grey sky, clapping our mittened hands together and stamping our booted feet. We take turns to go and stand by the brazier where two guys are roasting chestnuts, but the respite is all too short. Ten minutes of warmth, then back to the hut.

A brass band is playing _The First Nowell_ on my return. I find a big, broad, dark-haired man in a long wool coat browsing the stall. When he turns to greet me, I see he is wearing a clerical collar.

“Are you the artist?” he asks, pointing to a row of my top-selling ‘humourous’ cards – sketches of Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and the like in satirical festive situations. Some of them are pretty irreverent, and I blush at having them scrutinised by a  man of the cloth.

“Yeah. I mean, they’re just a bit of a laugh, really, not intended to offend…”

He waves a hand. “They’re not to my taste. I prefer the watercolours.” He pauses, lowering his already deep voice. “I liked your cartoon of the Dean though. I was wondering if you had any more like that.”

I freeze, a little squeeze of panic tightening my chest.

“What…cartoon of the Dean?” I falter.

“Oh, come on. Phasma told me it was you.”

“Who’s Phasma?”

“The verger.”

“Where’s that name from? Lithuania?”

He does another hand wave, and this one definitely indicates impatience.

“I was asking about the cartoons.”

“No comment,” I mumble, turning away in dismissal and reaching for my flask of tea.

“I just thought it would make a good joke present for the Bishop,” he says.

“The Bishop?” I bite, interested. “Do you know him?”

“I work closely with him. I’m an Archdeacon. I don’t suppose you know what that means…”

“You supervise an area of the diocese,” I tell him, pleased to be able to contradict him. “If the vicars are playing up, you get to knock their heads together.”

He smirks, and I realise that he is handsome, in a saturnine kind of way. I can see why the verger is keen. All the same, the speaking in tongues might put me off a bit.

“Something like that,” he says. “So, any more cartoons?” Something occurs to him. “You don’t have any of _me_ , do you?”

“Not yet,” I reply. “But now I’ve met you…”

“I’ll have to keep an eye on you.” If he’s joking, he has an excellent poker face. I clench everything.

“Don’t worry, I’m too busy to be sketching the entire cathedral chapter anyway.”

The brass band moves on to _God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen_.

The Archdeacon grunts and sidles over to Rey’s stall.

“Did you make all these yourself?” he asks her.

“Every one.”

“They’re good. I’ll take three of the coathanger stars.”

He turns back to me as Rey bags up her wares.

“So why the interest in the Dean?” he asks, the question hitting me like a boot to the stomach.

_Because I fancy the long black robes off him._

“Oh…” The Archdeacon’s voice softens and his lips curve up into a smile. “Speak of the devil.”

I follow his gaze and take a sharp breath.

Beneath the flying buttresses, a tall black-clad figure glides, skirts swishing about his feet. He is heading directly for us and he isn’t looking all that friendly.

Another carol takes root in my head.

“ _The angel Gabriel from heaven came_

 _With wings as drifted snow, with eyes as flame._ ”

However, when he speaks, his words are not, “All hail, O lowly maiden, Mary.”

Instead, brandishing my caricature, he hisses out the all-encompassing, always-unanswerable question, “Well?”

Ignoring the clear enjoyment of the Archdeacon, who is loitering with Rey on the sidelines, I meet the Dean’s sub-zero glare.

“Well what?”

“I suppose this was intended for my eyes, was it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He jabs one black-leather-gloved finger at Messrs Trump, Farage et al.

“I’m no art critic but, judging by the similarity in style, I think I can safely assume that you drew this. Hmm?”

“Well, yeah,” I admit reluctantly. “But I didn’t mean for you to see it.” I frown at the Archdeacon, to whom the Dean turns with imperious distaste.

“And I daresay _you_ have nothing to do with this turning up on the vestry noticeboard, Mr Archdeacon?”

“I didn’t buy it, Mr Dean,” he says glibly.

“Phasma then? I’ll be having words with her.”

“Oh, now, leave her out of it…”

“As a verger at this cathedral, she is directly answerable to me, Mr Archdeacon. _You_ have no influence whatsoever in this matter.”

“No, but…”

“And don’t even _think_ about running crying to the Bishop,” he continues.

“You know the Bishop will see my point of view,” parries the Archdeacon.

“Oh? Well, perhaps he isn’t as deeply in your pocket as you think. At any rate, I wouldn’t test the theory, if I were you.”

“What has he said? What do you…?” The Archdeacon is suddenly flustered.

The Dean, satisfied, turns back to me.

“As for you,” he says, tapping the caricature with the tip of one elegant finger. “Your card is, quite literally, marked.”

He stalks off, to the pomp-pomp-pomp of the brass band, the Archdeacon following him a few moments later with a face like thunder.

“Jesus,” I moan, picking up the caricature, which the Dean has allowed to flutter to the ground.

“What an arse,” says Rey with feeling.

“I dunno,” says Finn. “I think he likes you.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm having fun with this - hope you are too.

My ears are still stinging half an hour later, although admittedly the bitter cold might have its part to play in that.

How _dare_ he tick me off like a kid caught sticking chewing gum under a pew? Who the _hell_ does he think he is? And what gives him the _right_ to take up so much space in my erotic imagination?

In between customers, I find myself trapped in a daydream of an alternate reality, in which we exchange hot words, causing me to slap him and him to grab hold of me and stop up my furious mouth with passionate kisses…oh dear. I had no idea I had this cheesy romance novel in me. And besides, you can’t exactly re-enact scenes from _Poldark_ in the middle of the marketplace.

“See what I mean?” says Rey, returning from the chestnut brazier with  big paper cups of marshmallow-topped hot chocolate for the three of us. “Sheer hatred. Barely restrained homicidal impulses. It’s quite sexy, actually.”

“Oh my days, don’t tell me you’re hot for that big guy that bought the stars off you?” moans Finn, whom I suspect of harbouring designs on our Rey.

She laughs dismissively, but her pink cheeks give her away.

“Where’s that coming from? I don’t like him at all. He seems like a total jerk. Not as bad as the Dean, but heading in that direction.” She takes a sip of her chocolate, painting her upper lip with a cream moustache. “I just find all that simmering male tension a bit…y’know.”

I do know. Believe me.

“Perhaps they’re secretly in love?” I suggest, hoping not.

“I don’t think so,” said Finn. “But whatever their beef is with each other, they need to stop taking it out on my (y/n). He talks to you like that again, he gets one of these chilli garlands shoved where the sun don’t shine.”

“Aw, you’re awesome.” I give him a hug. “Listen, would you look after the stall for a little while. I just feel like taking a little walk – need to clear my head.”

“Sure, no problem.”

I move through the crowds, trying to avoid elbows and pram wheels, until the stalls tail off and I am alone, walking across the patch of green at the unregarded eastern end of the cathedral. The south transept is covered in scaffolding, thanks to the perpetual effort to keep this great medieval building from collapsing, and it puts the tourists off.

I tramp across the crackly frosted grass, thinking angry thoughts, until I spot a narrow column of whitish smoke emanating from an arched doorway set into the cathedral wall.

Curious, I take a few steps closer, wondering who might be sneaking a crafty cigarette. I hope it isn’t one of the choristers. Pretty soon a black-skirted figure, angled away from the biting east wind, comes into view, and I suppress a little inward giggle at having busted a canon or something, breaking the cathedral no-smoking rule. Imagine what the Dean would have to say about…

He turns slightly and I clap a hand over my mouth.

The figure sucking furiously on the glowing cigarette and expelling the smoke into the frigid air is horribly, dizzyingly familiar.

I can’t prevent a little ‘oh’ of dismay escaping my lips.

Before I can flee, he has me in his sights. His face a tight mask of annoyance, he throws the cigarette butt to the floor and grinds it underfoot.

“You again,” he says sourly.

“Is that allowed on cathedral premises?” I ask with acid politeness.

“I make the rules around here, so yes it is,” he replies. “As long as it’s me doing it.”

“I’m sure the Bishop would understand the stress you’re under.”

“You…what on earth does the Bishop have to do with it? Are you trying to threaten me?”

“Like you did, back at my stall, you mean?”

“That was a warning, not a threat. It would be very easy for me to get that market license revoked, you know. One hint that mulled wine has been served to an underage customer…” He mimes the cutting of his throat.

“Right. And I bet you’d rather the Archdeacon didn’t know about your unhealthy little habit.”

He swallows, the movement of his Adam’s apple displacing his clerical collar for a moment. Two little pink blotches stain his snowy cheeks.

“The Archdeacon is irrelevant,” he says. “He has no say in the running of this cathedral.”

“But he has a lot of influence with the Bishop, I’ve heard.”

“You’ve heard wrong,” says the Dean brusquely but his subsequent silence tells me I’ve hit a nerve.

“So you would be fine about me telling the verger or the Archdeacon? They wouldn’t spread rumours or make life difficult for you with the chapter at all?”

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” he hisses. “If only the Lord had seen fit to send a plague of market traders to Egypt, the Israelite slaves wouldn’t have had to hang around for so long. Will you just go away and leave me alone?”

“With pleasure,” I say. “On one condition.”

Uh oh. Something has taken possession of my brain and is forcing highly inadvisable stuff out of my mouth.

His eyes narrow. “I don’t make bargains.”

I almost give up, but a conviction that I am acting in his best interests urges me on. I’ve never seen a man so in need of loosening up. Or such a pretty face so consumed by shadow.

“I’m not asking you to sell your soul. I’ll keep quiet about what I’ve seen today if you’ll…” I hesitate. Am I really going to do this?

“Go on,” he growls.

“Meet me later,” I rush out. “At the ice rink. Seven thirty.”

He x-rays me with his eyes, as if searching for ulterior motives.

“I’m sorry,” he says at length. “I shouldn’t have mocked the afflicted. You are clearly insane.”

“Voluntarily spending time with you? Yes, perhaps I am. But…will you?”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve asked you to.”

“I mean, why have you asked me? What’s in it for you?”

“Call it an act of Christian charity, Mr Dean. So, shall I see you there?”

He frowns down at the flattened butt on the flagstone below. “Was there something stronger in that cigarette I didn’t know about?” he asks himself.

“I’ll just go and get that verger…Phasma, was it...to sweep it up, shall I?”

I take a step away. He almost springs out of his hiding place, clutching at my sleeve.

“No, leave it,” he snaps. “I’ll meet you later, all right? Seven thirty at the…” He shudders. “Ice rink.”

He opens the door he has been lurking beside and bangs it behind him, leaving me to laugh manically at my own daring, and its unexpected reward.

It seems I have a date!

The rest of the day feels surreal. Every time I get a moment to draw breath, it feels like spangles in my lungs and I keep bursting out into a mixture of laughter and cringeing, wondering what the hell he thinks of me. He thinks I’m weird. And a troublemaker. And that I hate him.

It’ll certainly be interesting anyway.

“I’m packing up at seven tonight,” I tell Finn and Rey, as the non-existent sun sets.

“Taking off early?” Rey looks surprised.

“Yeah, I… Just something I’ve got to sort out, y’know. Back at home.”

“Bugger. I forgot to mention it.”

“Mention what?”

“While you were off taking a break earlier, that Phasma woman came over and invited us all for drinks in the pub. I accepted on your behalf. Sorry – thought it would be OK.”

“Oh! Oh, I didn’t realise. Oh well. I guess…make my apologies for me, will you?”

“Sure.”

I chew the inside of my cheek, wondering whether this is a good or a bad thing. If Phasma and the others are in the pub, they won’t be hanging around the ice rink at least. But it means the Dean and I will have to choose our post-skate pub with care if we don’t want to be seen snogging under the mistletoe by half the chapter.

Or I might be getting ahead of myself.

When the cathedral bells chime seven, I start to pack up, suddenly teeming with horrible misgivings. I’ve seen no evidence that the Dean has a pleasant, sociable side. There’s a strong likelihood he’ll just bitch and snip at me until I give up and let him go home.

“Well, at least I can say I tried,” I murmur to myself, putting the final lid on the final box and locking the hut for the night.

“Tried what?” Finn waves a satisfied customer away into the night and raises his eyebrows questioningly.

“Oh…nothing.”

“No, what?” he persists. “You’re in a really funny mood today, (y/n). Kind of distant but frisky at the same time. Like you’ve got a big fat secret you can’t tell but you really want to. Know what I mean? What’s it about?”

“I’ve got a date with the Dean,” I tell him.

His eyes pop for a moment, then relax into merriment as his deep laugh rises up.

“Yeah, good one,” he says. “Whatever. OK, keep your secrets then. I’ll get them out of you in the end.”

“Night, Finn. Have fun later on. Night, Rey.”

I walk off purposefully, until I round the corner and they can’t see me any more.

Oh God. I can see the ice rink. Suddenly my feet are lead and my legs bendy rubber. Am I really doing this?

_Look_ , I tell myself, putting one cement-filled foot in front of the other, _there’s a very strong chance he won’t even turn up_.

The thought is both calming and dismaying. Do I want him to turn up? What _do_ I want? _Why the hell am I doing this?_

I can see the rink, not as crowded now that the market is winding down for the night. Just half a dozen teens and young adults shouting out and linking arms with each other. It would be nice to have someone to link arms with like that. It’s been so long…

I yelp and jump back as a dark figure steps out from between the café and the booking office.

“Oh Christ, you’re early,” I gibber.

“I am not the risen son of our Lord,” he admonishes me. “But yes, I am a little early. As are you.”

“Yes. I’m, er. Sorry. I wasn’t quite sure you’d be here at all.”

“Neither was I,” he says. “But I spotted the Archdeacon marching up to the Deanery like Herod en route to slaughter the innocents and I slipped out of the back door.”

“This is an interesting variation on the flight into Egypt.”

His lips twitch and lift a little, something more than a smirk but not quite a smile.

“You could say that,” he says. “So, what do you have in store for me tonight? If you’re expecting me to pose for more of your poison-pen portraits, you can think again.”

“No, nothing like that,” I said. “I’ve booked two spots on the rink. Final session of the night.”

He steps back into shadow, his luscious lips now firmly downturned.

“Are you actually serious?” he says. “You’re expecting me, the Dean of Winbury Cathedral, to ice-skate?”

“Oh, go on. You’ll have fun. And you get to choose what we do afterwards.”

His brow lifts a little at that.

“Oh, do I? Anything I like?” He tilts his head. His eyes are positively glittering.

I begin to regret the offer, but I can’t take it back now.

“Anything you like, Mr Dean.”

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this fic certainly has a boutique readership, but so what? Quality over quantity, I say. Thanks to all who are sticking with it. I reward you with - Hux on ice!

For a moment there is so much sexual tension in the air that the cold is quite forgotten.

A quick easterly gust reminds us, clearing our heads enough for speech to be possible once more.

“You know, you don’t have to call me Mr Dean,” he says. “I do have a name.”

I know this, but I’ve been trying to avoid the issue, because his name is awful. _Armitage?_

“Oh, I don’t know, Mr Dean has a certain ring,” I say uncomfortably.

“Yes, well, you can call me Hux,” he says, and my relief spills out with my breath. Yes, his surname, much better. “But don’t take it as a concession. It’s only because I don’t want you bellowing ‘Mr Dean’ across the ice rink. I’m hoping to remain strictly incognito tonight.”

“Surely even the Dean of a cathedral is allowed a little fun now and then?”

“This is penance, Ms (L/n), not fun. I am undergoing the ordeal on the presumption that it will be good for my soul.”

He has sucked in his cheeks, only serving to emphasise the absurd precision of his cheekbones. His eyes are lifted heavenwards in penitential long-sufferance.

“Oh, you protest too much,” I say. “You love it really.” The cathedral chimes the half-hour. “Come on, then, better get our skates on. Literally.”

Only when he steps out into the lighted pathway between stalls do I realise that he is not robed, but dressed as any well-heeled young man about town might be, in a long dark wool coat, college striped scarf and leather gloves. Underneath his coat he might even be wearing jeans. Amazing.

“You’re awfully young for a Dean,” I remark as we queue to exchange our shoes for skates. “I thought you had to be practically Methuselah.”

“Winbury is an unusual diocese,” he says, tight-lipped.

I suspect he has something seriously tabloid-worthy on the bishop, but it doesn’t seem a good time to ask when he’s so grumpy about having to shove his feet into skates and pull the laces tight.

“How on earth do these things work?” he grumbles.

“Let me.” I’m already skated up, so I drop on to my knees on the rubber matting and fix his laces in the approved manner.

“Mm, that position suits you,” he says.

Mildly shocked, I widen my eyes at him, my heart thud-thudding. He is _definitely_ flirting with me now.

“I only meant you ought to come into the cathedral and pray now and again,” he says, but the curl of his lip is devilish.

I straighten up and watch him push himself up from the bench until he towers over me again.

“Perhaps I should pray for you,” I tell him. “You don’t look too steady on those blades.”

Looking me dead in the eye, he says, “You’d be better off praying for yourself.”

A nervous thrill weakens me from head to toe. _Oh God help me_ , I think, taking his advice.

We clunk down the walkway to the rink, Hux hanging on to the side rail all the way. I step out first, taking to the ice with grateful pleasure. I love ice-skating and make sure I do it as often as I can, every winter.

Hux, I’m guessing from the way he stands at the edge, testing first one blade then another on the frozen expanse before him, doesn’t.

“Just step down,” I call, gliding back up to him. “It’s not as bad as it looks. Hold on to the rail until you get your balance.”

With a determined shake of his head, he manages to get both feet down on the ice. Immediately his skates splay out and he almost loses his balance, clamping his hands down hard on the barrier to steady himself.

I can’t help laughing. With his long skinny-jeaned legs, he looks like a ginger baby deer taking its first steps.

“You won’t have anything to laugh about when this is all over,” he vows through gritted teeth.

“I’m sorry.” I hold out a hand to him. “Everyone finds it difficult to begin with. Let me help you.”

But he waves me away, so I leave him to it and enjoy myself, skating swift figures of eight, relishing the nip of cold on my skin and the breeze in my hair and the sheer freedom of it.

When I return to him, he has moved a few inches away from the barrier and is taking tentative steps with his arms out in front of him.

“Well done,” I applaud.

“Don’t you dare patronise me.”

“You’re being very brave,” I tease, laughing at how easy it is to just glide away beyond his reach and his cutting tongue.

I complete a circuit of the rink and return to encourage him some more. Well, encourage or goad. Maybe both.

He seems to have trouble finding his centre of gravity. I’ve seen it so many times with tall, thin people. Perhaps their feet are too far away from their brains.

“Why don’t you try and skate rather than walk?” I suggest. “You just need to put your weight on your foot and…” I demonstrate.

He scowls, but gives it a go. Too soon. His arms flail wildly and he grabs hold of me, bringing us both down on to the ice in a tangle of scarves and limbs.

My shocked squeal of laughter dies away as I become highly conscious of his close proximity. My legs are caught up in his and I’m not sure how to extricate them. He still has a tight grip on my arm, and I am hanging on to his scarf as if it’s the only thing keeping me from dropping into a chasm.

Suddenly I can’t feel the cold. I know it must be there, I know the melting ice must be seeping through my coat into the backside of my jeans, but all I can feel is the roasting tips of my ears flooding through to bathe the rest of my body in tingling heat.

“Mr Dean,” I whisper. “Your leg is…”

We both look up, startled by a flash of blinding light.

“Don’t you two look cosy,” coos a familiar voice. When my eyes adjust, I find them looking into the bright baby blues of the verger, Phasma, holding her mobile phone over the barrier. “That’s one for the Christmas newsletter, I think.” And off she skips, presumably on her way to the pub to tell _everyone_ in Winbury what she’s just seen.

“Oh God,” I moan. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll get you back for this,” he whispers, his lips very close to my ear. “Just wait and see.”

“I guess you aren’t really cut out for skates,” I concede. “I’m surprised. I would have thought ice was your element.”

Slowly, we disentangle and haul ourselves carefully upright.

“I prefer it in my whisky,” he mutters, making sure he has a firm hold of the barrier before easing himself back towards the changing hut. “Perhaps you might think a little about what my real element might be before we continue with this evening.”

My heart skips. I’d been sure he was going to storm off and leave me, but apparently not.

“Oh? What are we doing next then?” I ask, unlacing as quickly as I can in my excitement.

“That’s for me to know, Ms (L/n) and you to find out.”

“Am I likely to enjoy it?” I ask, his tone making me wary.

“That will depend,” he says, casting off his skates and taking them up to the exchange desk.

“Depend on what?” I take up the thread after a few minutes of shoeing and coat/scarf/glove/hat adjustment.

“Your tastes,” he says briefly.

“You know, I’m not sure this is sounding all that tempting a prospect,” I say, as we re-enter the market place, now in its nightly death throes. “You’re going to get me back. I won’t be laughing. Perhaps I should go while the going’s good.”

“What about your promise to me?” he asks. We leave the market and walk out on to that same patch of green that had been the scene of our earlier encounter.

“Oh, I mean to keep it,” I tell him, dodging out of the way as he reaches for my arm. “But you’ll have to catch me first.”

“Sweet God, you really are asking for it, aren’t you?” he snaps, exasperated, as I take to my heels.

I pound the hardening grass, my arms spread wide, running towards the stars. I have a presentiment that tonight is going to be a night that will change my life. These are the last minutes, perhaps the last seconds, of an old order.

But my future is catching up with me. I can hear its footsteps, fast, swishing through the blades. Before I can reach the eastern end of the cathedral, it has me in its grip, a bruising bond around my upper arm.

“I don’t know what your game is…” it hisses, but then there is an unexpected burst of the opening bars of _Sir Christ_ _èmas_.

I look towards the cathedral, thinking there must be a concert, but the windows are dark.

“Who is there that singeth so?” I sing, watching Hux fish his mobile phone from his coat pocket and frown at the display.

“The Bishop,” he replies tersely, putting the phone to his ear and turning away from me.

“Yes. Yes, that’s right. No, she… no! No, not at all.” A deep sigh. “Ten minutes, then.”

I bite my lip. My future seems to be receding.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“I have to go,” he says. “To the palace. I don’t know how long…”

“Oh, OK. Well…” I chew harder, wanting him to make the first move towards stating an alternative plan.

He doesn’t. He simply bids me goodnight and strides off in the direction of the Bishop’s palace.

For a split second, I consider joining the others in the pub, but then I remember that Phasma will be there, and it was she who caught the pair of us horizontal on the ice. I really can’t face the blizzard of interrogation that will blow my way.

So I retrace my steps and trudge back to my rented room in the shadow of the multi-storey car park.

*

The next morning is awkward.

Rey catches up with me on the path across the cathedral close.

“Hey! Hey, (y/n)! Hold up.”

I halt reluctantly, dreading what she might have to say to me.

“Fancy a quick coffee?” She indicates the early-morning refreshment hut just opposite the cathedral’s west door. “There is much to discuss.”

“Yeah, about that…”

“Me first,” she trills. I notice that her cheeks are a bright blush pink. “Never mind you on the ice with the Dean. You’ll never guess who turned up at the pub last night?”

“Go on.”

“The Archdeacon, with a group of temperance campaigners, trying to get us to give up our wicked ways.”

“Oh God! Not that he’d have any problem with you -  you don’t drink anyway.”

“Well, quite. He noticed my bottle of cranberry J2O and started holding me up as a good example to the group. God, so embarrassing. Then, just before the group left, he took me aside and, well, I think he asked me out.”

“No way! Seriously? Like, on a date?”

“I don’t know. Does asking me to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols tonight constitute a date? Or is he just being…social?”

“A date at the _cathedral_. Novel.”

“I know. I don’t know how to take it, to be honest. Is he trying to get into my pants or save my soul?”

“Do you want him to get into your pants?”

She giggled into her coffee.

“Oh God, you do!”

“No, no, I don’t. He’s much too intense for me. But good-looking. But then, I guess he’d never be up for a fling because of all the religion. I don’t know what to do! Tell me what to do.”

“Go to the festival,” I suggest. “I mean, it can’t hurt, can it? And then you’ll get more of a picture.”

“You have to come with me,” she says. “Oh, but I bet the _Dean’s_ invited you.” She gives me an arch look.

“No,” I say, with mock nonchalance. “No invitations here.”

“So what was that, last night on the ice? Phasma showed us the picture.”

“Oh, uh, just a coincidence. We happened to have tickets for the same session.” Approaching my hut, I can see an envelope nailed to the door. What fresh hell is this?

“A likely story,” exclaims Rey. “He was all over you like an octopus.”

“Look, there’s nothing going on between me and the Dean,” I tell her, releasing and opening the envelope. “Nothing at all.”

But apparently I’m wrong.

“6.00 p.m. The Deanery. Be there. H.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The carol Sir Christemas can be checked out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mupj_VNJosI


	4. Chapter 4

Bloody Reverend Dr Hux owes me an hour and a half’s takings, I think sourly, shutting up my stall early for the second night in a row.

Of course, I could just ignore his imperative command and continue to trade until close of play, so my protestations are a bit hollow. I just don’t want to admit to myself how excited I am by the prospect of what might be to come. Losing out on twenty quid or so seems a reasonable price to pay for…what? I tense with anticipation.

I will know soon enough.

To be honest, I’m relieved to get away. Finn has been in a horrible mood all day, and Rey has been bending my ear about the Archdeacon until I can barely stand it. The approach of Christmas has rendered the market crowds more frantic and bad-tempered than pleasure-seeking, and I’ve had more than one argument about how much my work is worth.

All day I’ve been keeping an eye out for his robed figure standing tall in the midst of the milling hordes, but his profile has been lower than the cathedral crypt.

I think I might be a little bit scared.

“See you tomorrow,” I promise Finn and Rey.

“Hey, I thought you were coming with me tonight,” says Rey. “To the nine lessons thing.”

Finn just grunts.

“I’ll try but I can’t promise,” I tell Rey. “Not sure how this thing I’ve got to go to will pan out.”

“Oh, this thing,” she says, putting finger quotes around the noun. “Nothing to do with the Dean, I suppose.”

“I have to go. I’ll be late.”

*

So, to the Deanery.

Imagine having a house named after your position. Perhaps I’ll re-christen my rented room The Sketchery. Anything would be an improvement, after all.

In Hux’s case, the Deanery is a handsome Georgian number with red ivy climbing the walls and a very pretty fanlight over the front door.

I stand looking at this fanlight for much longer than I should. Somehow I can’t seem to lift my hand up to the big brass knocker.

Behind it, a subtle golden light glows, imparting a small amount of illumination to the front rooms, which are otherwise unlit. I suppose he is in?

I take a step back, just as the holly wreath beneath the brass plate quivers, followed by the slow opening of the front door.

Hux stands there in an open-necked silk shirt and dark trousers. No dog collar. Off duty.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” he asks softly. “Come in.”

“Nice place you’ve got here,” I mutter nervously, taking in the Turkish rugs and antique fixtures and fittings. “Must take some looking after.”

“I have a housekeeper,” he says, ushering me into a comfortable front room. There’s a fire in the grate and a lot of brown leather to sit on. It makes me think of Sherlock Holmes’ private rooms, for some reason. “But I’ve given her the night off.”

I hover around a sofa, waiting for the invitation to take a seat. It doesn’t come.

“I’m so glad you came,” he says, unleashing half a smile. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

“Wow. Did you just say something nice to me or was that an auditory hallucination?”

He stands with his back to the fire so the flame’s glow illuminates his silhouette and picks out every golden accent in his fascinating hair.

“That smart mouth could get you into a lot of trouble, Ms (L/n),” he says. “One day.”

He means today.

“I’ll bear that in mind,” I tell him. “So…what’s going on here, then?”

He stretches out the moment before replying. He knows I’m nervous. He is enjoying it.

“I would offer you a drink first, but I don’t have much time,” he says. “I have an engagement in the cathedral in just over an hour.”

“The nine lessons and carols.”

“Mm hmm. But there will be ten lessons tonight, Ms (L/n), since you have come here to learn one.”

My stomach flips. Oh God. What is he on about? One hour isn’t a lot of time to get down to the hot sex I’ve been hoping for, especially if he has to take his place in the pulpit afterwards.

I wait for him to continue, too lost in a choppy sea of exhilarated fear to speak.

“’Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord’,” he quotes, his lips flickering. “But don’t worry. I’m not about to demand the blood of your first-born.”

“What then?” I ask, my voice coming out in a hunted little whisper.

“In a moment, I will ask you to go through the concertina doors into the back parlour,” he says. “You will find there, on a desk, three items. Each of them suggests an act of penance for you. You may reject one, and bring the other two to me.”

“Ooh, Christmas party games,” I say, with more sarcasm than is probably wise.

“Make sure you know what you’re playing with,” he warns, waving his hand in front of the fire. “Last night you said you thought my element was ice, but actually I prefer a little more heat.”

I swallow hard. The tension is exquisite. I almost don’t want it to end.

“Go then, and choose,” he says. “Bring two back to me – leave the third. The choice is yours.”

“It sounds like a test,” I realise.

“I suppose it does. You’ll fail if you dither for much longer, though. Chop chop.”

He claps his hands, sending me scurrying towards the sliding doors that separate this room from another, behind it.

A single lit candle guides me to the desk on which it stands. I am still a few steps away when I stop still and gasp.

This really is a test. And I know exactly what he wants me to choose.

I daren’t even look at it at first. I cast my eye over the other two items, in the midst of which it lies like a sleeping snake, gathering strength for its next strike.

To its left, an iron. Yes, almost comically prosaic there on the antique desk with its much more glamorous counterparts, a Morphy Richards steam iron with the coil neatly wound, sitting on top of a small pile of laundry.

He can bugger off if he thinks I’m going to iron his shirts for him!

But then, this is my get-out clause. If I choose the iron I don’t have to choose…the other thing.

My eyes flick past it, to the right, where a bible lies, open to pages from the book of Isaiah.

No idea what this means. If I choose it, will I have to commit myself to a certain number of church service attendances? Or will I have to copy it out twenty times?

Either way, it’s a definite contender. I can’t see how it can lead to anything too awful, unless he wants to re-enact certain of its bloodier scenes.

And now I can no longer look away from the centrepiece.

I reach out to it, making sure that it is real, and not some joke-shop version. The handle is sturdy enough; the feel of the cold plaited leather makes my arm weaken and I withdraw my hand as if burnt.

I let my breath flood out like rolling waves, cresting and crashing on the shore.

Unless he means to take me out riding…perhaps that’s what it means? Could it be?

It’s too thin a straw to clutch at. I know what he means.

Which means that I have to deal with my own, deep-rooted, issues. I’ve fantasised about this kind of thing for years, but denied it and buried it because it sits so uncomfortably with my twenty-first-century-independent-woman self image. Even when past boyfriends have hinted at anything similar I’ve just laughed them off and changed the subject. They weren’t the kind of men I could take seriously with a whip in their hands anyway.

But now I realise what has attracted me to Hux right from the start – I can’t laugh at him. I can see this plaited leather handle in his long white hand as if it grows naturally from his flesh. I can take him seriously. Very seriously indeed.

And I really want to see him with it.

But do I want...? I flinch slightly, at the very thought. Fantasies are one thing, but actual physical pain quite another.

“I’m waiting. I don’t like waiting.” His voice drifts through from the other room, galvanising me.

Even if I didn’t have those fantasies, I couldn’t pick the iron. I snatch at the bible, then pick up the riding crop, my eyes popping slightly at its sleek and deadly appearance.

I hide them both behind my back, inhale deeply and walk back into the front room.

“Oh, keeping me in suspense,” he says, raising his eyebrows at my approach.

I stop a couple of feet in front of him. He holds out a hand.

“Well?”

_He knows_. There’s a predatory self-satisfaction about his manner as he makes a beckoning gesture with his fingers.

I hold out the bible to him and he takes it, nodding.

“What this means, Ms (L/n), is that you have now volunteered to take the fourth reading at the festival of nine lessons and carols tonight.”

“Oh, I haven’t!”

“You have. Phasma has called in sick, apparently, so we need a fill-in. Thank you.”

“But I’ve never…”

“It’s very easy. You walk up to the lectern and read from a book. I’m sure you can manage that. Now, what about your second choice?”

My fist clenches tight around it, my nails digging in to my palm.

My gaze falls to the floor, but he tuts.

“Look at me,” he says quietly.

It’s agony to hold eye contact with him while holding out the riding crop in my sweaty, shaking hand, but somehow I manage it.

I watch his facial muscles twitch and his eyes widen ever-so-slightly. The ghost of a flush materialises about his throat.

“Perfect,” he whispers, taking the whip from my hand. “You have chosen exceptionally well.”

“You’ll have to iron those shirts yourself,” I say, clearing my throat, trying hard to add a lightness to my tone.

“I can live with that,” he says, running his fingertips along the slender shaft of the whip, then bending back the flat leather tip, assessing its flexibility.

“But are you really going to…?”

He lays the rectangle of leather against my cheek, sending a shuddering shock through my body.

“I think you know the answer to that. Don’t you?”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to leave you hanging! I'll try to post the next chapter as quickly as I can.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was so thrilled with your kind reviews and kudos-givings - thanks a million! Now, assertive Hux is back, and he's on form.

I should flinch away from the whip, but I don’t. Instead, for some reason, I find myself tilting my face to meet it, my eyes half-closed in a strange rapture, breathing in the heady scent of the leather.

“You give your consent then?” he urges, withdrawing it slightly. He sees that he has me exactly where he wants me, but there is something fraying at the fringes of his steely self-control; something that betrays how very much he wants this.

“For you to…use that thing on me?” I croak.

“You can’t say a word to anyone. Not a syllable. Do you understand?”

I nod.

“I won’t. I promise.”

_Just get on with it. Don’t give me room to change my mind._

I think he understands how fragile this enchantment is. So many things could break it.

His demeanour alters, just fractionally – the lifting of his chin, a general sense of holding himself in readiness – but enough to tell me the time for getting out of it by pretending it’s some kind of joke is over. We are now committed to our course.

He uses the whip as a pointer, directing it towards an ornate wooden stool, upholstered in plum-patterned chintz.

“Go and kneel over that stool,” he orders.

I hesitate. When he says ‘kneel over’ it, I’m not exactly sure what he means, so I give him a questioning look.

His reply is to sweep the whip through the air until its arc stops short on my bottom. It isn’t a hard stroke but it makes me jump.

“Now,” he says, seeing that I need clarity, prodding me forward with the crop tip in the small of my back.

When I reach the stool, he helps me to my knees with a hand on my shoulder, then pushes me down so my upper body is flat against the chintz cushioning. I grip the edge of the stool, feeling small and silly and very exposed, since this position thrusts my arse into unforgiving prominence.

I wish I’d worn my jeans today.

True, my leggings and long jumper provide an additional layer, but it still seems meagre protection compared to the comforting heft of denim. The wool of the jumper should go someway to mitigating any sting, though.

Or so I think, until he reaches down and lifts the hem of the jumper over my rounded cheeks, leaving it to rumple at my waist.

I gasp at the unabashed cruelty of the gesture.

“What are you…?”

“I need to see my target,” he teases. “And a very good target it is too.”

Another compliment. I think.

“Keep it still and pushed right up,” he says. “Hold on tight.”

“I’m a bit scared,” I admit. “Is it going to really hurt?”

“You haven’t done this before?” He sounds surprised.

“Nope. I’m kind of hoping you have, though.”

He taps the end of the crop against my bottom. I clench all my muscles.

“Once or twice,” he says. “Tensing like that will certainly not help you, so I suggest you don’t bother.”

“How many?” I ask, my voice wavering.

“That’s up to you,” he says. “I did have a figure in mind, but since this is new to you, I’ll let you determine. You tell me to stop when you’ve had enough. All right?”

I’m astonished at these easy terms, but also troubled. Leaving the ball in my court means that I have to virtually admit that I want him to do it to me. Embarrassing.

And very arousing.

“All right,” I mutter, grateful that I’m able to hide my face in the slippery chintz.

“Good. Then we can begin.”

He rubs the flat, flexible tip of his whip around his target area. I cringe at how large it seems, and what a mortifying view I’m giving him.

“Remember not to tense,” he says, then there’s a swoosh of rod through air and a splat of smart, sweet heat across the lower portion of my right cheek.

“Oh! God,” I gasp, feeling the warmth radiate, trying to assess whether it hurts or not.

It doesn’t, much – a firecracker rather than an inferno – but it certainly has my attention.

The jolt of my head causes me to realise that I can see a glimpse of us in the top of a wall-mounted mirror. The upper half of Hux is standing back, with a bright-eyed look of utter concentration I find devastatingly sexy.

I watch him draw back his arm, narrow his eyes in silent calculation and flick his wrist sharply down. For a moment, I don’t connect the pleasing view with the explosion at my rear end, and I’m almost surprised to feel it.

I make a small, strangled vocalisation of surprise.

“Bearable so far?” he asks, rubbing the crop from cheek to cheek.

“Mm hmm,” I confirm.

“Is it what you expected?”

“I…wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s…interesting.”

He sounds amused. “Let’s see if we can hold your interest, then, shall we?”

The next two strokes follow swiftly, one after the other. They make more noise on impact and are harder, falling just below the previous two.

I don’t make any sound this time. They hurt, but in such a sweetly addictive way that I want more immediately. And more I get.

Hux is careful and precise, making sure he covers my bottom evenly and without missing an inch. The first layer of strokes lights me up and gets me craving more. I feel I could watch his reflection applying the whip to my backside for an eternity. Nothing has ever fascinated me more.

“You’re quiet,” he observes, but he doesn’t let up, proceeding to repeat the pattern. This time the strokes are a little harder and the heat goes accordingly deeper. It becomes more difficult to follow his advice about not tensing. I have to grit my teeth in order to avoid yelping inelegantly.

He moves down to the tops of my thighs, and this is truly uncomfortable. I have to put all my energies into holding my peace and keeping myself in position.

“You’re a stoic one,” he observes. “I’ve struck lucky here. So to speak.”

But his third round almost defeats me. I begin to squirm and whimper, although the sound of it and the sight of him in the mirror is more exquisite than ever. I am beginning to burn, and the burn is turning into such an itch between my thighs that I can hardly stand it.

“You only have to tell me to stop,” he reminds me.

Why don’t I tell him to stop?

Instead, I grunt, “I know,” and push my bottom out for more.

He stops for a moment. In the mirror, his eyes are half-closed in wordless pleasure. I have given him this pleasure. My heart swells, and so does something else, between my legs.

“Oh, you really are a find,” he whispers. “All right then. You need more, and you’ll get it. But I need to see what I’m doing, or I might go further than I intend.”

“What do you…mean?” I ask, jittering with nerves as his hand grips the back of my leggings.

“I need to see if I’ve bruised you,” he says, and I squeak as he yanks the leggings down, then pulls my knickers up high so the material bunches in the crease of my bottom, baring my whipped cheeks to his expert gaze.

“A lovely colour,” he gloats. “But no bruising thus far. Good. Let’s continue.”

He holds the tip against my skin. It feels different on bare flesh – the sensation is augmented to a point of almost dizzying eroticism. I want to moan and push myself against it, but somehow I am clinging on to some vestiges of self-respect and I refrain.

Now there is serious sting, tightening my skin in imitation of bad sunburn. I watch him lay stroke after stroke, in love with the sight of it, even as the unforgiving feel of it makes me pour forth a stream of ineffectual protest.

I know he will carry on until I say the words. I am on the verge of crying them out, half a dozen times, but each time I manage to ride the wave of another hard stroke, spreading out to the very limits of my tolerance.

I will ask him to stop soon, but now a new concern has taken the place of this simple struggle against pain. _What will happen next?_

If he doesn’t touch me, I’ll die. But I can’t ask him to touch me.

In my efforts to put off this inevitable dilemma, I let him push me further and further, almost beyond what I ever thought I was capable of enduring. In the mirror, he has broken a sweat, his perfect hair unravelling into unruly strands across his brow.

_What if he just asks me to leave?_

At last, I really can’t hold out any longer. My bottom is in full flame and my legs are trembling so violently I fear I might collapse out of position. I cry out for him to stop, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes.

_Please don’t let this be over._

He stands over me, the crop hugged to his chest, rising and falling along with it in hectic rhythm.

He licks his lips, swallows.

_He feels it too._

When he speaks, his voice is a little cracked, dragged over gravel.

“I’ve bruised you,” he says. “You didn’t tell me to stop. I got carried away. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care,” I pant. “I got carried away too.”

He cups a hand under the curve of my bottom.

“So hot,” he murmurs. “You must be very sore.”

“I don’t care,” I repeat.

He moves his hand to my shoulder and helps me to my feet. I need the help. I feel as if I’ve lost a good proportion of my bones. He wraps me into him, holding me upright on legs that are three-quarters liquid. He presses his cheek to mine. He smells so good I could lose my mind in his scent.

When our lips meet, we are like hungry animals, foraging in each other. For however long it lasts – seconds, minutes, I’m not sure – I disappear from the world and become that kiss.

The rod hangs from his hand, its tip bumping gently against my calf as we wind and twist in each other’s arms. My leggings are still bunched around mid-thigh. Heat pulses in my exposed rear cheeks, but it is receding already in this cooler corner of the room. Hux’s hand drifts over his work, apparently drawn there like a magnet. His fingertips drum lightly on my taut skin. I am aware now of a deep-seated stiffness that will make walking interesting, and sitting a challenge.

But this is low down in my list of concerns. At the top of it is my urgent desire – _need_ – to be thrown over one of his antique sofas and ravished by him. I push myself hard into his lean body, signalling this hunger, willing him to understand me.

He relinquishes his grip on me and stands back, panting lightly.

“Enough,” he says. “There isn’t time.”

I cannot understand what he means and I stare at him with tragic incomprehension until the lines of the real world come back into focus.

“Oh God.” I clamp my hands to my face and speak through them. “The bloody lessons and carols.”

Within seconds, my knickers and leggings are readjusted, my jumper falling back down until it skims my thighs again. I rush to the mirror and survey my wild hair, my flushed face, my dewy brow, my lips swollen with kissing.

I can’t read the bible to a devout congregation in this state!

I tell Hux as much, but he is having none of it.

“Of course you can,” he says, already pulling on a coat and scarf. He reaches back for my hand, finds it, captures it, pulls me towards the door. “And you will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Profuse apologies to calina_tere for posting this so relatively early in your day ;).


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy to return to Christmas at Winbury! Hope you all had a great time.

I came to the cathedral on a school trip once, in year five or six, and I remember taking a close look at the exquisite carvings in the choir stalls, including one that represented a penitent medieval chorister on his knees along the arm rest, begging some unseen antagonist to let him off a whipping.

So I guess those medieval choristers would have known how it felt to be sitting, as I am now, perched awkwardly on the very edge of a misericord seat up in the quire with the vocalists and holy types, trying not to wince. The slightest movement reminds me forcefully of the tenderness below. It is both appalling and delicious, especially with the pale, blank face of its originator across the ancient tiled walkway from me.

He has not looked at me once.

He left me at the vestry door with instructions to ‘find Sheila’, who would know what to do with me. Sheila, an efficient iron-haired woman who had some kind of dominion over Special Seasonal Events, looked me up and down with undisguised suspicion.

“You’re reading, you say?”

“Yes. Fourth reading. The Dean asked me.”

“Did he indeed? And what’s your involvement with the cathedral?”

“I, er…” _I have a kinky S &M thing going on with the Dean. _“I’m the spokesperson for the Christmas market traders.”

“Oh, that’s interesting. You can always trust the Dean to think outside the box. All right then, you’d better go and join the other readers up in the quire. There’ll be a seat for you, marked Phasma, but of course you’re filling in for her.”

So here I am, in Phasma’s allotted chair, squirming on the very edge while carollers carol and readers read and the Reverend Dr Hux, Dean of Winbury, sits impassively in full black-and-red robed regalia, ignoring the Archdeacon. He has already opened the service with a bidding prayer, intoned with elegant and precise diction that reaches to the far pillars of the edifice. He’s very good at the public speaking thing. I hope I won’t let him down.

Down in the congregation, near the front, I spot Rey fidgeting with an order of service leaflet. She hasn’t even seen me. Her gaze is trained on the sullen figure of the Archdeacon, slouched in his chair like a malcontent teenager, apparently deeply involved in the same ignoring game as the Dean.

The choir diminuendoes into silence and bobs back down into the pews, as if remotely controlled to do it in perfect  team formation. I am so enthralled by this that I fail to take my cue, until a minor canon to my right nudges my arm.

Suddenly my uncomfortable position on the misericord seems like a very desirable place to be. Compared to that pulpit. That highly positioned and lonely great pulpit, looking out over a good quarter of a mile of cathedral, filled to the brim with eager upturned faces.

I hesitate. Hux’s eyes flick over to me, for the very briefest of microseconds, but it’s enough to give me the will to make my way forwards. I totter past him on stiff legs and climb the seemingly endless – in reality only about six steps – spiral stair to the lectern.

A giant bible lies open to the relevant page.

I keep my eyes down, clear my throat, swallow hard and open my mouth.

Then I make the mistake of looking up. Oh God, there are _thousands_ of them.

Thousands of faces, young, old, bespectacled, bearded, topped with woolly hats or white hair, and they are ALL LOOKING AT ME.

I stare at the words in front of me. They swim in a black-edged pond for a moment or two before blessedly focusing. I can do this. If I could take what Hux gave me earlier, I can definitely do this.

“The peace that Christ will bring is foreshown,” I read. So far, so good.

But as I proceed, I begin to have my suspicions that Hux has given me this excerpt on purpose in order to mess with my head.

“And there shall come forth a rod,” I read, and then halt for a moment as scalding heat suffuses my cheeks. I want to look back at him, but I can’t. “Out of the stem of Jesse,” I continue. All is well for the next few lines, and I begin to get quite into it, especially the bit about the wolves and lambs and leopards and kids. But then there’s some stuff about the ‘hole of the asp’ and the ‘cockatrice den’ which is very hard to read without the temptation to snurk childishly.

Thank God these little gems come near the end of the reading, and I’m able to heave a sigh and scramble down those pulpit steps as fast as I possibly can, marching past Hux with my head high and my neck angled away from him.

In my haste, I forget to take it easy sitting down again, and I shoot back up from my chair with a hiss of discomfort.

Hux’s lips quirk into a half-grin, which he hastily covers by coughing into his hand. Swine.

The service continues without further incident. The choir sings beautifully. The Archdeacon reads the final lesson in an impressive, sonorous baritone. Rey gets serious heart eyes. Poor Finn.

And at last, the Dean is giving the closing collect and blessing, and we are bellowing out _Hark The Herald Angels Sing_ and the whole thing is done.

Now, I wonder anxiously, can we go back to the Deanery and have all-night-long wild sex please?

Apparently first there is carousing to be done. The verger team are patrolling the aisles with mulled wine and mince pies. The choristers try hard to get their hands on the former, but are palmed off with the latter, plus some sparkling grape juice.

I make my way down to Rey, standing in the nave with her plastic cup of spicy red gloop. She laughs as she catches sight of me.

“You did a reading!” she accuses. “How on earth did you get roped into that?”

“Don’t ask,” I mutter, reaching for a mince pie. “Mm, these are good. Do you think they’ll give me the recipe?”

“No, but how?” she persists, undaunted by my very obvious subject-change gambit.

“Wrong place, wrong time,” I say, glancing towards the robed and gowned contingent up in the quire. Hux is there, with the Archdeacon and various canons and precentors.

The Archdeacon says something to him that makes him glower. Suddenly, the pair of them are glancing over at us, causing us to feign sincere interest in our festive foodstuffs.

“The Dean asked you,” Rey surmises.

“Yeah, he did,” I admit. “Last minute sub for Phasma. Substitution. I mean, substitution.”

“I get it,” she says, much too knowingly for my liking. “So, go on, tell me more. What’s really going on between you two?”

For a moment, I’m strongly tempted to confide in Rey, but Hux made me promise to tell nobody, and I have a weird kind of loyalty to him. Not that I really owe him any, but there it is.

“Nothing, I just did it as a favour. Phasma cancelled, and I was the first likely candidate he happened to bump into after that.”

“Oh, and where did this bumping take place?”

“In the Close,” I say uncomfortably.

“After you shut up shop early for no reason?” She laughs at my discomfiture. “Oh my God, your face, (Y/n)! Bright red.”

It’ll match another area of my anatomy, then. But I don’t tell her that.

“Isn’t the Archdeacon taking you out on the town now?” I ask, looking over at him. He and Hux have moved slightly apart from the main group, and the discussion they are having looks heated, the words coming from the sides of their mouths through gritted teeth.

She sighs. “I don’t know. I only saw him very briefly before the service began. He did say he’d see me later, but…oh. Here he comes now. Quick, make it look as if we’re deep in conversation and don’t know he exists.”

It’s hard not to be hyper-aware of the large, dark shadow descending upon us, but I twitter bravely about the pre-Christmas sales all the same, until he speaks abruptly.

“Rey,” he says. “I hope you enjoyed the service.”

“Oh, it was very nice, thanks. Good readers.” She grins at me, but his face stiffens even further. He refuses to acknowledge me.

“There’s a prayer meeting at St Botolph’s in half an hour. Would you come with me?”

“Oh.” I can tell it’s not the kind of date Rey was hoping for, but she recovers well. “Well. Um. OK.”

Suddenly he is aware of me, eyeing me with bright speculation. “Perhaps your friend could come with us,” he suggests.

Rey is even less enamoured of this suggestion, and so am I, to be fair.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I say through a mouthful of mince pie. “Too much on my plate already.”

His gaze is piercing. I have to turn away from it before my rising hackles become visible.

“Christmas, y’know,” I add, because I’m sure he thinks I’m talking about the Dean.

“I do know,” he says, then he thrusts out an elbow for Rey. “Shall we?”

“Yes,” she says, taking his arm. “Bye, (Y/n). Be good. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Her last words have barely melted into the cathedral’s echoey acoustic when Hux materialises behind my shoulder.

“Where’s he taking her?” he asks sharply.

_What’s it to him?_

I frown at him. “Some prayer meeting. Why do you care?”

Hux chuckles under his breath. “The clueless oaf,” he sneers.

“You’re not a fan, then?”

Hux broods into his plastic cup of mulled wine.

“The man’s a fool.”

“’For ye suffer fools gladly/Seeing ye yourselves are wise,’” I quote.

“Oh, you should be very sure of yourself if you seek to use scripture against me,” he says softly, moving closer, away from prying ears. “That’s a game you can’t win. And St Paul never had to put up with the Reverend Benedict Solo, or he might have tempered his words. But it’s good that you know your bible.”

“I didn’t know that passage you made me read.” I flush at the memory. “All that stuff about the rod of Jesse and cockatrices and suchlike. I think you chose that on purpose.”

“Not in the least. It’s a traditional reading. I enjoyed the way you read it too. The little tremors in your voice at certain moments. Very entertaining.”

“You’re horrible.”

“You make it sound like a compliment.”

And he’s right; I’m practically purring and rubbing myself against his legs. It’s as if we’re in a little bubble of heat and desire that the cathedral crowds can’t penetrate. What little air there still is between us crackles with it. We have moved unconsciously closer and closer to each other until his robes brush against me and his intoxicating scent surrounds me. Leather, old books, mint covering a hint of cigarettes, mulled wine spices, his warm breath at my ear.

“It wasn’t easy up there,” I tell him. “I was distracted.”

“Oh, so was I, believe me,” he replies. “Watching you at the lectern, all I could think about was how I wanted to drag you off it and get you up against a wall. It’s a bloody good thing these robes are so capacious. They hide a multitude of sins.”

“Careful.” I laugh shakily. “You’ll get yourself de-frocked.”

His lips are right against my ear. “Well, that _is_ the idea.”

I shudder with lust. I can barely breathe. I want him to bend me over the nearest pew right here, right now.

“Have you finished with that mince pie?” he whispers.

It feels like a solid block halfway down my esophagus. Never mix sex and pastry, that’s my advice.

I nod.

“Good. Because I’m going to take you up the bell tower.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!

Somewhere around the hundred and seventy fifth stair, the desire for immediate intimacy is overtaken by the desire to collapse, gasping for breath.

“Not much further,” mutters Hux, shepherding me up the never-ending spiral. He must have had some kind of endurance training, because he doesn’t sound noticeably wheezy. “One more landing.”

I hope he’s right. Hux’s mobile phone torchlight is all that illuminates the scene, which is like something out of Hammer Horror. I think there are literally bats in the belfry, as tiny miniature bird things shoot past us every now and again.

Otherwise, there is nothing but curved stone wall festooned with spider webs as far as the eye can see.

Hux’s reassurance turns out to be true. The next landing is no small stone platform designed for recuperation, but opens on to a huge square room full of giant wheels, velvet pull ropes and bells twice as big as me.

“They’re massive,” I breathe, insofar as breathing is still on the agenda. I am bent over with my hands on my knees, waiting for my lungs to stop begging for mercy.

“Yes, quite impressive,” says Hux, a bit dismissively. “But I didn’t bring you here to look at the bells. Come on.”

He strides across the wooden boards, his footsteps setting off a clattering echo and stirring up dust motes that play in the beam of his torchlight.

At the far end of the room, past all the disturbing shadows and mysterious shapes, is a door. Hux unlocks the door with a key from a jangling ring and opens it, introducing a blast of wintry air to the stale, thick atmosphere within the room.

I step out after him and find myself on a small walkway. An ornately carved balustrade is all that prevents us plunging down into the marketplace below. Gargoyles leer at us from the corners, and a little way behind us are the leads of the nave’s pitched roof. Beyond that, the lights of Winbury twinkle away, stretching out to the ineffable darkness of the chalk downs beyond. Above us, the stars.

It is magical. If I’d had any breath, it would have been taken away.

But…

“It’s bloody freezing out here!”

Hux moves behind me, pressing his layers of black robes into my back, wrapping his arms around my ribcage and squeezing tight.

“I can warm you up,” he whispers into my ear.

The nearness of him jumpstarts an immediate melting process. I tilt my head, presenting my neck. He accepts the invitation, kissing the exposed skin with such ravishing skill that my eyes roll back in rapture. It feels as if he is drawing the life out of me and replacing it with some shimmering stuff that makes me want nothing but more of him.

Once I am drained of any last vestiges of resistance, his mouth finds mine. There is no cold, just the heat of our bodies transferring between us and his tongue probing ever deeper.

Urgent hands reach under my coat, rucking it up from the back. It is only then that I become aware of the distant sounds of the city below and the fact that we are, to all intents and purposes, out in public.

“What…?” I whisper, extracting his tongue with some difficulty from my throat. “What if all those people down there can…?”

“Oh, they can’t,” he dismisses, wrenching my coat to my waist and setting to work running his gloved hands underneath my sweater. “They can’t see a thing.”

“Are you sure?”

Supple leather-covered fingers skim over the bare skin they find beneath my jumper, moving up towards my bra.

“Trust me.”

“Now that’s a challenge.”

He slips his fingers inside the cups of my bra. I dissolve into mindlessness, all concerns about the people down there scattered to the winter winds. He devours the back of my neck, finding a whole new array of erogenous zones I had been ignorant of.

In fact, at this point, I am one giant erogenous zone, and he knows it.

He pulls my bra cups down over my breasts and gives my nipples a brief but eye-watering pinch before repurposing his hands to deal with my leggings. In seconds, they are down, and my knickers follow them in short order.

He grinds himself into my bare bottom, which is still sore from the whipping. Even under all those robes, I can feel his hardness, straining against the dark cloth. I am whimpering helplessly by the time he slides two fingers inside me and gives me two or three exploratory thrusts.

“ _So_ ready,” he gloats, withdrawing them and making me suck my own juices from each tip. “Aren’t you?”

“Just…oh God. Just…go on…”

It takes him less than a minute – but it feels far longer – to rid himself of the encumbering robes. As he fumbles and unfastens, I come momentarily to my senses.

“Have you got…?”

“Yes, yes,” he rasps. “Don’t worry. Just keep yourself ready for me.”

A moment later, I hear the snap of rubber, then I feel the longed-for pressure between my lower lips. I push myself towards it, opening eagerly as he penetrates with one swift, deep stroke.

“Dear _God,_ yes,” he mutters, holding himself all the way in while his hands clamp my hips tight. “I’ve been thinking about this for days.”

I shut my eyes against the spying stars, taking a moment to fully appreciate the fact that I am standing here on the cathedral tower, fully exposed to anyone who might look up this way with a pair of binoculars, getting unceremoniously taken from behind by a man who gave me a good thrashing with a riding crop a couple of hours earlier.

It’s too enormous to feel in its entirety. I give up and surrender to my body, which wants only to get on with things. Luckily Hux’s body wants the same, and he sets to a hard-going, fast-paced rhythm, crushing my breasts against the stone balcony with each lurch forwards. I hold on tight, ignoring the many discomforts of our unusual position in order to focus on the growing heat sparked by the friction inside me.

He slaps up against my bottom cheeks, grabbing them and spreading them wider before using one hand to rub my swollen clit.

He is so good at this, _so_ good at all of it, I start to have delirious thoughts about him being an envoy of the devil sent to infiltrate the house of the Lord. Thinking can only happen in the most fragmentary kind of way, though, and it is quickly obliterated by the feast of sensation swirling through my body.

He doesn’t let up until I find myself clamping my mouth to his arm, braced on a metal rail with one hand over mine, and pouring out a muffled orgasm into the black clerical cloth.

In response, he shudders into his own climax, squeezing my hand so hard I think he might snap a bone or two before slumping over me, his chest rising and falling rapidly against my back.

“’M’sorry,” he gasps after a few seconds. “Next time I won’t be in such a rush.”

Mm, next time. Liking the sound of that.

“And maybe vary your foreplay,” I yawn. “Not that climbing up two hundred and fifty stairs wasn’t novel, but…”

“You’re very funny,” he says, patting my bottom lightly as a warning. “But I think we’ve talked before about your smart mouth getting you into trouble, haven’t we?”

I sigh happily.

“This is my favourite kind of trouble.”

He shuts me up with a languorous kiss then hauls himself off me and sets himself to rights.

“I see quite a lot of trouble in your future,” he tells me, patting down his robes and running a hand through his less-kempt hair.

“I’m glad to hear it.” I pull up my leggings and try to shake some of the fuzz out of my head. “But…I mean…isn’t this some kind of deadly sin or something? Fornication?”

Hux pauses in the rearranging of a cuff, shooting me a dark look.

“Planning to rat me out to the General Synod, are we? Don’t bother. As long as it isn’t adulterous or illegal, the CofE is fairly relaxed with pre-marital sex these days.”

His use of the phrase _pre-marital_ jolts me into a rather pleasant fantasy of a cathedral wedding. I have to give myself a swift kick to dislodge it. _That wasn’t a proposal, you dork._ Anyway, shagging the man is all well and good, but I wouldn’t give much for my chances of being able to put up with him on a 24/7 till-death-us-do-part basis.

“Just as well,” I say sniffily. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, I say. All the same, I can imagine some people might take a dim view of sinning on cathedral premises.”

“I’m sure they would,” he says dryly, “but I recognise no authority other than God, so they can take any view they like, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Really? What about the bishop?”

He sighs.

“Shall we go inside before icicles start forming on us?”

“Good plan.”

We return to the bell tower, which isn’t an awful lot warmer, but is at least sheltered from the increasingly bitter wind.

Hux sits down on a wooden chest and pulls me on to his lap, into a temperature-increasing snog.

“I have a proposition for you,” he says, breaking off before the temptation to sin can return at full bore.

“Another one? You’re full of them tonight.”

“This one doesn’t involve the violation of your flesh.”

“Ah, shame.”

He pats my thigh. “I can throw some in for you, if you prefer.”

“I do.”

Another kiss.

“Mm, that’s good to hear. But let’s get on to the proposition, shall we?”

“OK. Sorry. I’ll try not to be the mouthpiece of Satan for a minute.”

“If you’re the mouthpiece of Satan, he uses a very good breath freshener, I must say. Look, stop flirting and let me speak for a minute.”

“All right. Get thee behind me, Satan. Oh, sorry, too late. That’s already happened.”

He smacks my thigh a bit harder.

“First verbal warning,” he growls.

“That wasn’t a verbal warning!”

“I promise you, you don’t want to escalate this. Just shut up and listen.”

“OK.” I assume an expression of meek attention.

“Apparently it’s the tradition that the Dean gives a drinks party for the Chapter on Christmas Eve, before Midnight Mass. I was wondering if you’d be free.”

“Christmas Eve? That’s tomorrow.”

“So I gather. Well?”

“You’re inviting me? I’m not a member of the Chapter.”

“I’m aware of that,” he says with barely suppressed impatience. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“Well.” I stop to think. The sad truth is that I have nowhere else to be on Christmas Eve. My family have gone on holiday until New Year. My friends are all coupled up, loved up, parents of small children etc. etc. Rey, being in a similar boat, had offered to meet up with me for Christmas Day drinks, but that was as far as my planning had gone. As far as the rest went, it was a turkey readymeal for one and an eggnog in front of _The Snowman_.

“Are you busy? I know it’s short notice…”

“No,” I say slowly, “no, it’s fine. I could come. If you really want me to.”

“I do,” he says, his face relaxing from its earlier tension. “I do, very much. I’d like to introduce you to the Chapter.”

“You’d…really?”

I feel mildly unsettled by this, as if a whole stage has been skipped somewhere along the line. From meeting to kinky sex to meeting the ‘family’, this all seems to be happening at a breakneck pace. Should I be worried?

Oh, but why look for flies when the ointment is so pleasurable?

I’m _enjoying_ myself, for once. I’m going to bloody well make the most of it.

So I shut my eyes and sigh into another steam-inducing kiss, until we are interrupted by the unwelcome sound of footsteps on the stone staircase.

We spring apart and I hurry to conceal myself behind a bell.

“Oh! Mr Dean,” says an elderly male voice. “I was told there was somebody up here. I had no idea it was you. Excuse me.”

“Nothing to excuse,” says Hux smoothly. “Just checking that the bells were in order for the Christmas Eve peal.”

“Of course, of course. I’ll, er, leave you to lock up then, shall I?”

“Thank you. Goodnight.”

 


	8. Chapter 8

Christmas Eve morning is the last gasp of the market. We serve our final customers just before midday, then we pack up our stock, load our cars and vans, and wait for the hut company to come and dismantle our temporary home.

It’s a strange, almost melancholy feeling. The ice rink remains until New Year, so Finn, Rey and I have a lunchtime skate, then pile into the café and drink black forest hot chocolates while the market falls to pieces before our eyes.

I don’t want to ask Rey about her prayer-meeting ‘date’ in front of Finn, and I certainly don’t want to talk about my thing with the Dean – whatever it is – so we stick to stupid jokey gossip about our fellow traders.

Just as we are in mid-guffaw about the aggressive wooden toy carver’s fight with the glühwein brewer, the brewer himself knocks on the window and waves.

“Oh, that’s for me,” says Finn, jumping up so quickly he knocks our plate of gingerbread muffins to the floor. “Promised him I’d help him pick out a present for his mum. Laters. Merry Christmas and all that. See ya next year.”

We watch as Finn greets the glühwein man with a bear hug and – oh my God! – a full-on kiss on the lips!

“Oh my God,” Rey and I exclaim simultaneously, both following up with, “Did you know about this?” before bursting into excited laughter.

“I had no idea,” I answer myself. “I thought he liked _you_. I was sure he was jealous of the Archdeacon.”

“Well, so was I,” says Rey. “And all the time he was seeing Dameron on the quiet. He must be the darkest horse in Winbury.”

There’s quite a bit of competition for that title too, I reflect.

“He’s even more secretive than you are about your affair with the Dean,” she continues casually, causing me to choke on my cherry cream.

“What…do you…?” I splutter.

“Oh come on. You’ve _so_ obviously got the hots for him, and I saw the way he looked at you when you were reading in the cathedral last night. It isn’t decent, in the house of the Lord,” she adds with a prim little giggle.

“What way did he look at me?” I ask, wishing I could have seen it.

“Like a cat watching a bird and thinking _I’m having that later_.” She takes a delicate sip. “So, did he?”

“Did he what?”

“Have you later?”

I am saved by the bell, in this case her message alert tone.

“Oh!” By the way she colours, I think I know who the sender is. “Oh.” Then, again, slightly crestfallen, “Oh.”

“Ben?” I enquire lightly.

“It’s the Reverend Solo to you,” she teases. “But, look, I hate to ask this, but would it be OK if I cried off our Christmas Eve in the pub plan?”

Shit, I’d forgotten about that in all the hurly-burly.

“He’s asked you out again?”

“You know I’m very much mates before dates usually, but this sounds like kind of a big deal. Some party at…”

“I know where the party’s at,” I confess. “I’m going to it myself.”

“Ha! So I _was_ right about you and the Dean.”

“OK.” I can’t really lie to her, especially since Hux seems to want to go public about us anyway. “There is, er, an entanglement of sorts between me and the Dean.”

“An entanglement, eh? Sounds complicated.”

“It is. Anyway, how did you get on last night? Must be going well, if he wants you to go to this party with him. All the cathedral bigshots are going to be there.”

“Yes. He seems really keen. It was weird going to that meeting, though, watching him doing his preaching thing. He was _intense_. All the other people at the meeting treated him like a god of some  kind. I wonder if I ought to keep a bit of distance. I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew, and I get the feeling he’s an all-or-nothing kind of guy in a relationship.”

“You don’t feel ready to make a commitment?”

“Well, of course not. It’s been a matter of days. Why – you aren’t picking out engagement rings, are you?”

“Jeez, no. It’s just, you know, an _entanglement_.”

“Sex,” she translates.

“Not _just_ sex,” I protest. “But…mmm.” Visions of the cathedral tower, then a second, less frenetic coupling next to a bell afterwards drift through my mind. It certainly gave the phrase _going like the clappers_ an interesting alternative reading.

“It sure is a different way to spend Christmas,” she says. “Seducing high-ranking men of the cloth. We’re like, Jezebels of Babylon or something.”

“Wasn’t it the whore of Babylon? And Jezebel was someone else?”

“I dunno, never read the bible.”

“Don’t tell the Archdeacon that. He’ll have you on an Alpha course before you can say Revelation.”

She sighs.

“It’s not really a match made in heaven, is it? But there’s just something about him. I wish I knew what it was, then at least I could put up a good fight. But something draws me to him, almost against my will. It’s kind of…worrying.”

I frown with concern. “Be careful, Rey.”

“Well, since I obviously can’t be good, that’s what I’ll have to do.”

Another mobile phone tone chirps up – this time it’s mine.

_“Come to the Deanery, preferably now, if not sooner. H.”_

Excitement and irritation battle for mastery of my feelings. The summons is not unwelcome, but the summonsy nature of it makes me want to defy it. How dare he assume I can just drop everything and run over to him? What makes him think I even _want_ to?

  1. He has good grounds for thinking I might want to.



And I do want to.

But I don’t want to want to.

Argh! Perhaps I should just get on the next train to wherever and hide from it all.

Instead, I gather my stuff together and mutter an apology to Rey.

“Oh, where are you off to? Don’t tell me! That was His Holiness, wasn’t it?”

“Might’ve been.”

“Calling you to prayer?”

“That’s the Archdeacon you’re thinking of.” I wink at her. “Anyway, I’ll see you later.”

“Yes! At the Deanery. Double date!”

*

The Deanery door, with its giant holly wreath, is ajar.

As soon as I enter the handsome vestibule, I am commandeered by the Dean, who puts his hands on my shoulders and steers me towards a vast Christmas tree.

“I need your artistic eye,” he says. “What do you think?”

I stare at the monstrosity. It’s been decorated in the strangest way. All the baubles are at precise intervals, running across the tree in perfect diagonal lines, intersected with strings of red and gold beads.

“It’s more like a geometrical figure than a Christmas tree,” I remark. “I think it needs to…let go…a little.”

“Let go? What do you mean?”

“I mean…” I step forward and take a red gingham bow from a basket of decorations at the base. I clip it on the nearest bough.

“Now that just looks untidy,” Hux objects.

“Hux, it’s a Christmas tree. It isn’t supposed to be tidy. It’s supposed to be festive and cheering.”

I pick up a length of tinsel.

“Oh, no, no,” he says, almost panic-stricken. “Not tinsel. I hate the stuff.”

I laugh at this. “Why? I mean, I suppose it’s not the most sophisticated, but…”

“It’s a fire hazard.”

“Right. So we’re having lit candles in the tree, then, are we?”

“No, but…just no tinsel. I’m afraid I must insist.”

I shrug and put the tinsel back.

“OK. But just leave the tree to me. I’ll make it look good, I promise.”

“I’m relying on you. Now, I need to go and brief the caterers. Come and find me when you’re done.”

Hux approaches party planning like a military operation. Every aspect of the preparation is timetabled and organised to the nth degree. I am directed from the tree to the lighting, then to polishing glasses, then to designing a centrepiece for the buffet table.

By dusk, the kitchen is full of people in chef’s whites preparing canapés and there is a string quartet rehearsing in the drawing room.

“Just help me uncork these reds so they can breathe,” says Hux, brandishing a corkscrew, “and perhaps we’ll find a moment to do the same.”

“Breathing’s good,” I confirm. “I was forgetting how to do it for a moment there.”

“Somewhere a little more private,” he adds, pulling a cork.

I flush redder than the wine.

“We’ve got a couple of hours before people start arriving.”

“There are already people,” I whisper, indicating the string quartet and the caterers.

“But they won’t come upstairs,” he says, taking the corkscrew from my hand and linking his arm with mine. “And they don’t need us for anything now.”

Before I know it, he’s leading me up the stairs, past my considerably improved Christmas tree.

“Cathedral belltowers might be romantic,” he says, opening a door off the landing. “But they aren’t very comfortable. Wouldn’t you agree?”

I’m in Hux’s bedroom. The bedroom of the Dean of Winbury.

It has beautiful William Morris print wallpaper, thick velvet curtains and a high four-post bed. There’s a low fire burning in the grate, shelves full of aged leather-bound religious texts and a series of watercolours depicting scenes from the lives of the saints.

It looks in every respect like the bedroom of a wealthy, high-ranking clergyman.

Except for one thing.

The bondage rope looped around each post of the bed.

Hux sees that my eye has been drawn to it. He bends his mouth to my ear.

“Well, you didn’t think I’d be letting you out of here, once I’d got you in, did you?”

I shiver with delicious fear-tinged pleasure.

“You’re a very wicked man, Mr Dean.”

He laughs low, catches my lips, kisses them hard.

“You like it,” he accuses. “At least, I hope you do.”

“I do,” I admit. “All the same, you’re making a huge assumption about the level of trust between us.”

He raises his eyebrows, considering this.

“Are you afraid of me?”

“Noooo. Well. Not really. A little. Actually, yes. Yes, I am. You’re incredibly intimidating. Surely you’re aware of it?”

“Oh, come on, ‘incredibly’ is an exaggeration. I do like to keep my colleagues on their toes, but that’s all part of leadership.”

“I’m not your colleague.”

“No, but I want you to do my bidding.” He strokes one fingertip down the side of my face. “And I think you want that too.”

“Maybe,” I croak.

He slides a hand around my waist, pulls me flush and close.

“And if you trusted me enough to let me loose with a riding crop on your very alluring posterior, then I think you trust me enough to tie you up and have my way with you. Hmm?”

Oh God, this is a hard one to argue. Besides, I don’t want to argue. I want him to do exactly what he has outlined, but the last few bits of common sense in my head tell me this is a risky path to take.

But screw common sense! What has it ever done for me? And besides, I’m an artist. I don’t need to live by these rules.

“I guess you’re right,” I whisper.


	9. Chapter 9

This will be the first time he has seen me naked – fully naked, that is, not just certain parts of me uncovered. I don’t know why this makes me hesitate, keep twisting and turning away from him and covering myself with his determined removal of each garment, but it does.

Eventually, he notices, and holds me at arm’s length while I stand shivering mildly in bra and knickers and nothing else.

“Don’t try to hide from me,” he warns. “You really can’t.”

“I’m not used to…this. I mean, usually both parties get undressed at roughly the same time. This seems a little unfair.”

He curls his lip.

“I’ll get undressed when I see fit, (Y/n). Now isn’t quite the time. As you say, there are people downstairs, who may need me at any minute.”

“What about _me_?”

“They won’t need you. I can just leave you up here if I need to go and attend to anything.”

The idea that he might leave me, tied to the bed, to go and sort out cocktail shakers or whatever makes me gasp. He really would, too.

He pulls me in closer, resting his forehead against mine.

“Don’t be skittish,” he reproves. “I know what I’m doing. Just go with it, and I promise you’ll enjoy yourself.” I open my mouth to retort, but he kisses me quiet. “I promise,” he reiterates.

He reaches around to unhook my bra. It slithers to the ground and he cups one breast, kneading it, showing me that he can do what he likes with it. My nipples fail to object, stiffening in encouragement.

His other hand moves purposefully down my spine, seeking my final defence. It falls without a fight. I let him guide my knickers over the curve of my bottom and release them halfway down my thighs, where they drop to my ankles in sheer defeat.

Now I am all bare, tingling skin, rubbing up against his work trousers and dark shirt. The buckle of his belt is cold and drags a little against my stomach. I can feel how warm he is through the fabrics, how hard he is.

After more kissing, he holds me at arm’s length again, looking me up and down. I know what Rey means about that look in his eye now. I see it myself, and it makes me convulse with guilty excitement.

He turns me around with one hand at the nape of my neck, using the other to stroke my behind.

“Those bruises,” he murmurs, pressing at them gently with his knuckles. “Do they hurt you?”

“Not too bad today,” I tell him in a silly, small voice. I’m so embarrassed to be having this conversation, in these circumstances, that I almost can’t speak at all. “Compared to last night, that is.”

“I should’ve put something on them for you. Wasn’t quite thinking straight, I’m afraid. Too late now.”

“S’ok,” I quiver, dying for him to change the subject, despite the fact that it’s turning me on unbearably.

He nudges me across the floor, to a full-length wardrobe mirror. He stands behind me, his arms loosely around my waist, looking over my shoulder at our reflections – his fully-clothed, mine totally naked.

“Here’s my Christmas present,” he says. “All unwrapped and ready to play with.”

I half-shut my eyes in mortified arousal. The picture we make is too erotic to face head on.

“Bit better than a lump of coal, I hope,” I mutter.

“Oh, a lot better. What can you do with coal but throw it on the fire? No, I have many, many more uses for you, my dear.” I watch him move his hands up to my breasts, covering the nipples with his palms, rubbing them slowly and lightly. I see my hips tremble slightly and my thighs press together as a little mew of pleasure falls from my lips. He brings my face roughly round to his and swallows me up in a ravaging kiss. I watch it from the corner of my eye. It’s approximately the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, or maybe equal to watching him whip me in the mirror yesterday.

“Go and lie down,” he whispers, his voice all crackly and harsh in my ear.

I peel myself off him with some reluctance and lay myself down on the paisley-patterned bedspread. It’s cool and silky against my fevered skin. I turn my head away from Hux and try to pretend he isn’t looking at me in a distinctly predatory manner.

I curl myself foetally, still self-conscious about the element of display.

“No,” he says, looming up at the side of the bed and taking hold of a wrist. “What did I say about hiding from me?”

I am forced to uncurl; I watch wide-eyed as he takes up one of the wide strips of black cloth looped to the bedposts and winds it round and round my wrist before securing it in such a fiendish knot I wonder if he was ever a boy scout.

The binding is soft and snug, not too tight, but most definitely inescapable. I pull at it experimentally; there is very little give.

Moving to the other side, he repeats the procedure with my other wrist. Now I lie with my arms apart and slightly raised, their position forcing my breasts together, giving them extra prominence.

 _No escape now_ , I think, thrilled by the idea.

He looks down at me from the foot of the bed, calculating.

“How shall I have you?” he wonders aloud.

“Let me count the ways,” I add, before I can stop myself.

“Too many for that,” he says. “And by the way, I want complete silence from you from now on.”

“What? I can’t do that!”

“I know you’ll find it hard, but you’re going to have to try. One exception to the rule – if you really can’t cope, you can tell me to stop, by just using that word – stop. All right? Not ‘no’, or ‘I can’t take any more’ or ‘kindly desist, Mr Dean’.” He smirks, pleased with himself. “Just ‘stop’. Got it?”

I nod, unsure whether the rule has yet come into force or not.

He reaches for my leg. I expect him to tie it at the ankle, but he doesn’t. He winds the tethers around my knee, bending it at an angle so that my sex is mortifyingly exposed, then attaches it to the ankle and from there to the bedpost.

Once this is repeated on the other knee, I am held wide and helpless, spread open with no possibility of closing or concealing anything. He places a pillow beneath my coccyx, raising my hips so that the lower part of my bottom is also available to view.

It is ungainly and awkward and certainly incredibly undignified. I want to cry hot tears of shame.

But at the same time, the feeling of restraint, and the controlled intentness of his every move keep me hooked in. I am horribly aware of a tight knot of arousal at the base of my stomach. I tug on the bonds just for the pleasure of knowing I can’t escape them.

If I could, I’d be disappointed.

He knows that. How does he know all this about me?

He stands there, drinking me in for a good minute or two. The strain of having to stay silent is much worse than the strain on my limbs. My only way of hiding now is to make some jokey remark to defuse the tension, and he won’t even give me that.

“Nice work,” he murmurs, to himself presumably, then he goes to the wardrobe.

“Now don’t be alarmed,” he says, rummaging inside. “I’m not going to hurt you today. This thing has other uses.”

He turns around, brandishing the riding crop. I can’t prevent a little squeak of dread. He’s done quite enough damage with that thing lately; my backside is still stiff and a bit sore. What the hell else is he going to do with it?

“Quiet, remember,” he admonishes. He lays the flat end of the whip against my cheek and rubs it gently up and down. It’s cool against my flush, and it smells divine, but it feels dangerous and I clench hard.

_He wouldn’t hit my face with that thing. He isn’t that bad._

He raises it and I pant with relief.

The flexible tip travels slowly around my upper body, drawing slow patterns on my ribcage. Goose bumps pop up in response. The ticklishness of it sets off an answering tingle inside. The confusion of threat and desire sets off strong waves of arousal, making me want to moan.

He circles my breasts, taps against their fullness, not hard at all but enough to make them jiggle. I begin to grimace and writhe as he moves up towards my nipples.

“Shh, it’s all right,” he whispers, rotating the whip’s tip gently over first one, then the other. They flare with painful stiffness, standing up and begging for more of this treatment.

He covers them, then drags a corner of the leather around the perimeter of each, taps them left and right, giving them more attention than I can handle. I know I must be glistening wet below, and he’ll be able to see it, as well as my heaving chest and tearing eyes.

“Nod or shake your head,” he says, continuing to overstimulate them. “Have they ever been clamped?”

Oh God, what a question.

I shake my head, imploring him with my eyes to move down.

“Not yet,” he says.

He rubs them until I arch my back, as far as I can, and hiss.

I think he senses that my ability to keep quiet is running to the end of its rope, so to speak, as this is his cue to remove the crop from my nipples and zigzag it down, over my belly, until it reaches my pubic bone.

He traces the triangle’s outline, then edges around the stretched skin between lower lips and thigh, tickling each side but never quite touching the parts I really want him to reach.

If I could move more, I could wriggle into the target zone. If I could speak, I could make pleading little noises. I can do neither of these things. All I can do is lie there and take it.

“Do you have any idea how wet you are, (Y/n)?” he asks politely, laying the tip just beneath my slit, as if gathering juices.

Is this a trick question? Will there be a penalty if I answer?

I shake my head, although this constitutes a non-verbal lie. I know very well how wet I am. I can feel it.

“Really? _No_ idea?” He raises his eyebrows and gives me one quick, luscious sweep across my clit with the whip. He holds it up for my inspection. The leather gleams. “There. I told you you’d enjoy it.”

I grit my teeth and squirm as much as I can, a silent _please get on with it._

He gets on with it by slapping the damp end of the crop against the accessible portion of each bottom cheek – not hard, but enough to sting.

“That’s for fibbing,” he says, smiling at my unguarded squeal. “And this is for breaking silence.”

Two more, then he takes pity on me. Well, a kind of pity.

He flicks the crop delicately between my thighs, the little darts of sensation building a growing warmth on the tender skin. Every so often, he aims downwards and lays a little stinger right on my open spread. I jolt each time, but I don’t cry out. I concentrate on keeping silence while the incredible mixture of stimulation, growing heat, humiliation and helplessness builds and builds. I try to oppose it, clenching my stomach, making fists of my hands, biting down on my tongue, but he keeps going and my defeat comes within minutes.

“Ah,” I gasp. “No, please.”

He keeps going.

“Stop!”

He puts down the whip and folds his arms.

“You lasted longer than I would have expected,” he notes. “Just like yesterday.”

“I didn’t stay silent,” I say, rather woebegone at my failure.

“I didn’t really think you would. Are you sure you haven’t done anything like this before?”

“Quite sure. I think I’d remember.”

“I suppose so.” He sits on the side of the bed and reaches out to stroke my throbbing inner thighs. “Poor little (Y/n). So much to take in, so quickly. I think you’ve earned a reward.”

 


	10. Chapter 10

I have earned a reward.

This hasn’t happened to me since I handed in the Nintendo game I found in the bike shed to the school office and they gave me a gold star in assembly.

I suspect Hux doesn’t have a gold star in mind here, though.

He takes off his shoes and socks and comes to kneel at the foot of the bed, giving himself a direct eagle eye view of all my most intimate parts.

He bends down, between my knees, his face close and intent on my sex.

“Tell me what you want,” he says.

“You know…” I whine.

“Yes,” he agrees. “I know. All right.”

He strokes his thumb all the way around my labia, bringing it in closer and closer with each elliptical trail. He knows I am held in position and can do nothing to encourage or deter him. All I can do is watch him at work and hope he won’t draw this out for too long.

“I’m not sure you could be any wetter,” he remarks, moving closer. I will my clit to suddenly expand to meet his touch, but I think it’s at full stretch already. He keeps, very carefully, very delicately, just shy of it, exploring every other fold and furrow with maddening thoroughness.

I can’t do much, but I manage to give my spine a little wriggle of frustration, which makes him laugh.

“Patience, (Y/n). Haven’t you learned about deferred gratification? I’m very good at it myself.”

“I bet you are,” I mutter through gritted teeth.

He lets his thumb tip glide towards the target. When he touches it, I gasp with long-awaited satisfaction.

“There,” he says. “Worth waiting for?”

He brings his fingers into play, establishing a slow, sensual rhythm as he rubs and strokes.

“Oh God, I can’t even…” I panic, realising that I am much closer to orgasm than I thought.

“You were certainly ready.” He watches, amused, as the sensation spills out of me with surprising force. “But I’m not, yet.”

With that, he dips his fingers lower, pushing them inside me, then lowers his mouth to my still-tingling sex.

“Ah, I’ve only just…oh God…”

His tongue gets to work, refusing to allow my super-sensitive clit any respite, while his fingers probe me deep and wide.

If I weren’t tied like this, I’d thrash like a snake on a skewer, but as it is, all I can do is take it. My brain knows it’s useless to struggle, but my body tries it anyway, yanking on the bonds, making all the tiny movements it can, while Hux continues his implacable finger-and-tonguing of me.

I can’t believe how quickly he gets my engine running again. The stars have barely faded from my vision before I feel the first familiar stirrings at the pit of my belly, then my clit, slightly sore from rubbing, sparks back into life. Hux presses his knuckles down at a particular spot inside me and I find myself howling this time, almost knocked out with the strength of it.

He keeps thrusting with his fingers and lapping at my clit until the last whimpers ebb away, then he sits up and shakes his head at me.

“What will the caterers think?” he says. “I should think that carried all the way to the New Forest.”

“Well, you shouldn’t…oh God…I can’t even see any more…what _are_ you?”

“What I am, my dear,” he says, unbuckling his belt and snapping it through the loops, “is ready.”

His lower half is unclothed within seconds, and he braces himself above me, holding my hips, and slides himself in. I am absurdly lubricated but even so, I feel the gorgeous friction of him as he stretches my passage, finding the deepest point he can penetrate.

“Look at me,” he whispers, holding himself still and fully sheathed for a long moment. “I want to see your face while I’m fucking you.”

This is the stripping away of my final layer of defence. He said I couldn’t hide from him, and he meant it. I can’t pretend to be anything other than what I am – absolutely possessed by him.

I don’t expect to feel pleasure after the two tornadic climaxes I’ve already been made to have, but somehow, as he moves into a firm thrusting pattern, my soreness and overstimulation turns again to excitement. Watching him use me is a turn-on beyond words. His face, the way his shoulders flex and his shirt dampens and his breath shortens. It’s a different Hux, a man about to find the limits of his awe-inspiring self-control. I want to see him cross those limits.

The binds become double-binds now, because I really want to touch him, but all I can do is half-hang here, open to him, defenceless against him.

He watches my breasts bounce in rhythm, his eyes greedy, then he takes each in turn into his mouth, sucking at my nipples while he ploughs on.

I arch my back, feeling the onset of yet another climax rushing towards my nerve endings at an unstoppable rate. My eyes stretch wide and so does my mouth. He sees what is in the offing, dives down to kiss me through it so that my sounds of helpless ecstasy are swallowed by him.

He follows me swiftly. I see him tense, then lift his head, his face transfigured with a painful joy that is far from holy. I imprint his expression on my memory, wanting to keep it so I can draw it at some later time. I’ve been drawing him constantly for the last few days, but never like this.

At last he has thrown off the constraints of his impeccable composure and is the elemental man, wild-eyed, tousled, his lips parted in rough exhalation.

It feels like a triumph.

He wraps his arms tightly around me and lies with his head on my breasts, waiting for that iron self-control to return. I want him to talk to me before that happens. I want to catch the liberated Hux before he puts himself away again.

“That was…amazing,” I whisper. “You were.”

“Thanks,” he slurs. “Not so bad yourself. Mmm. Lord. I could stay here all night…wish I could…”

“Wish we could too.”

He raises his weary head and kisses me slowly and gently, two or three times.

“But we can’t.”

He strokes my sweat-damp face.

“(Y/n),” he begins, almost tentatively. “This is good, isn’t it? You and me?”

“God, yes,” I tell him, tears forming in the corner of my eyes at this unexpected moment of vulnerability. “Beyond good. I’ve never…”

I check myself. I’ve never felt like this before. But is it wise to tell him so?

He understands anyway.

“I’ve never either,” he says. “I mean, obviously I’ve…I’m not _inexperienced_ , but I mean, never felt like this before. Is that what you meant?”

Damn. Busted.

I can only nod.

“Good. I need to know that you’re taking this seriously, (Y/n). It’s important to me.”

“Me too. I am.”

“That’s just as well. Because I won’t untie you until you do.” His smirk is back. He kisses me quickly, then sets to releasing me from my tethers.

My ankles are undone, but my wrists still bound when there is a sudden loud knock at the door.

“Jesus!” I gasp.

“You blaspheme altogether too much,” he says sternly. “Who the hell is that?”

He pulls on his trousers quickly, but his shirt is still hanging out and he is a general post-coital mess as he heads for the door.

“Don’t answer it!” I squeak, but it’s too late.

He opens it a crack, just enough to show his face.

“What on earth do you want?” he says, with real venom.

I tug on my restraints, desperate to avoid being seen, although the angle at which the door is open would make that difficult.

“I seem to be interrupting something,” says a familiar deep voice. “Are you all right? You look…”

“I’m fine,” snaps Hux. “Just getting ready for the party, that’s all.”

“Right.” The Archdeacon, for it is he, sounds sarcastically unconvinced. “Anyway, I came here to give you a quick heads-up. You need to add somebody to your guest list. My plus one.”

“Your wet nurse?”

“Hilarious, Hux. My _girlfriend_ , actually.” He says it in a weirdly goading kind of way, as if he expects Hux to gasp with dismay.

Hux doesn’t, of course.

“Do I need to make provision for a guide dog?” he deadpans. “I’ll inform the caterers.”

“You’d better treat her with respect,” threatens Archdeacon Solo. “As I do. This is no _sordid affair_ , Mr Dean. It’s serious.”

“Really? You’ve been concealing a long-term relationship for that long? How long _has_ it been, out of interest?”

A discomfited silence.

“Long enough.”

“I hope you’re right, Archdeacon. You wouldn’t want to scare the poor girl off, I’m sure. Too much too soon can intimidate a woman.”

“I just came here to tell you, that’s all. I’ll see you later.”

He stomps off down the stairs. Hux shuts the door and stands against it, as if regrouping.

“I could do with untying here,” I remind him plaintively.

He snaps back into life.

“Yes, yes, sorry.” He frees me with brisk efficiency – definitely a former boy scout – and sits on the edge of the bed, staring unseeingly at the mirror.

“He’s rattled you,” I remark. “What was all that about?” I place an experimental hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t shrug me off.

“Oh, nothing worth bothering with,” he says, dragging his gaze back to me. He smiles, but it’s a bit watery. “Come on, we’ve overrun. We need to get ready.”

I shift to get off the bed and hit a snag.

“Oh God, I can barely move.”

This cheers him up, the sadistic git. He pulls me close and kisses me.

“My poor ill-used (Y/n),” he says. “I’ll run us a bath. It’ll have to be a quick one, though. It’s much later than I thought.”

“Oh! Do I have time to nip home and get changed? I can’t go down in my market gear.”

“I’m afraid not. But you needn’t worry. I’ve got you something to wear.”

“You’ve what?”

“I took the liberty…I wasn’t sure you’d have anything suitable. So I went into town this morning and got you something.”

“But…I mean…do you know my size?”

“I took a punt. Ten?”

“Right. Oh. What about shoes?” I’d been wearing Converse, not really soirée footwear.

“I played it safe. Bought stretch velvet ballerina slippers in a five. They have a strap across the upper, so they won’t fall off if you’re smaller.”

“Bang on! Oh my God. Why aren’t you working in fashion?”

“A man can be spiritual and worldly, I find.”

“So do I. So…what’s this outfit, then? Can I see it? Look, I’ll pay you back…”

“Oh, there’s no need. The sales had already started, so it wasn’t expensive. I rather disapprove, on the whole, of Christmas Eve sales and Boxing Day opening and the like, but in this case, I can’t really complain.”

“No, I want to pay you back…”

“I won’t hear of it,” he says firmly. “After all, I asked you here this evening at very short notice. If I want you to project a certain image, it’s up to me to see that you do.”

“You want me to project a certain image? What image?”

“You’ll see. And if you want to argue, you’ll have to do it in the bath, because we really don’t have time to spare.”

He stalks off to the en suite bathroom and commences running the taps.

I push myself gingerly off the bed, with many a wince, and go to join him.

 

 

 

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

The warm bath water eases my stretched, trembling muscles as I sink into it, leaning back against Hux’s chest.

I am seeing him naked for the first time now, and I like what I see. He is lean and firm, pale as moonshine, if more freckled. The startling golden red of his hair deepens to a coppery auburn when wet. I find it fascinating to watch the play of light on it, and the water shimmering on his long eyelashes, forming them into clusters.

“Does that feel good?” he asks, massaging soap into my shoulder blades while I groan with pained delight.

“Mmm, oh yes.”

I surrender to his ministrations, letting my eyes roll back and my body unwind into his touch.

“Do you often have women in this bath?” I ask drowsily, not much caring what I say or how he answers.

“Absolutely not.” He sounds offended. “You’re the first. What have people been saying about me?”

“Oh, nothing.” I twist my neck to register his frown. “I just…what the Archdeacon said about sordid affairs. I thought maybe there’d been others in the past…”

“The Archdeacon has never seen me with a woman.”

“So why did he say that? Oh! People are gossipping about…us?”

“This is cathedral life, (Y/n). Gossip and prayer are the life blood.” Hux sounds weary.

“Do you think he knew I was in here, tied to your bed?”

“He wouldn’t have known about the tying up bit, obviously. But rumours have been in the wind. I daresay he’s caught one or two.”

“Why is he being so weird about Rey?”

“Who’s Rey?”

“My friend. That’s the woman he’s seeing.”

Hux stiffens. “A friend of yours?”

“Yes. She’s a market trader too. Hats.”

“Hats.” Hux is silent for a while, lathering up his arms and chest. “Is she particularly religious?”

“No, not at all. But I’d describe her as quite a spiritual person. You know, she likes yoga and goes on long nature walks and that kind of thing. Reads self-help books about finding your inner goddess and whatnot.”

Hux makes a sound of vague disgust. “It’s considered spiritual to go for a walk these days? Navel gazing and faith are in no way linked. This generation’s self-absorption will be its destruction.”

“Ooh, hellfire and brimstone,” I tease. “You’re not in the pulpit now, you know.”

“No, but your friend and her yoga, and Solo and his ‘touched by the hand of God’ nonsense, are cut from the same cloth, I feel. No wonder they’ve got so close so quickly.”

“I think he overstated that. Rey still had quite a few doubts, the last time she spoke about him to me.”

Hux draws in a breath of satisfaction.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. Look, can I ask why you care? What business is that man’s love life of yours?”

“About as much as mine is of his,” mutters Hux. “Listen, if you’re a good friend of that girl he’s taken up with, you’ll warn her off. He is in no fit state to be dragging another human being into his mess.”

“Oh dear. That doesn’t sound good. Poor Rey. What sort of mess?”

“He has emotional and family problems that have never been resolved. He takes it all out on everyone around him. He’s a liability. I just don’t know what the Bishop was _thinking_ … Oh, never mind. You don’t want to hear all this, and I’m boring myself with it now. Let’s dry off, get dressed and…”

He grits his teeth.

“Party on?” I suggest.

“If we must.”

He climbs out of the bath, then helps me out in turn, wrapping me in a blissfully soft, thick towel and patting me all over. Once we are no longer dripping, we wander back into the bedroom.

I wonder, with a rising flame of excitement, what I will be wearing tonight.

“Sit by the fire and dry your hair,” Hux directs, slipping into a silk bathrobe. “I’ll get your things ready.”

I brush out my hair and watch him retrieve a variety of tissue wrapped packages from a drawer.

“Oh! You got underwear too?” I realise as he lays them reverently on the bed.

“When I do a thing, I do it thoroughly,” he says, turning to shoot me a filthy smirk. “You may have noticed.”

“Just a bit.”

He hands me one of the packages.

“Here, you may as well get started.”

I unwrap a tiny scrap of something that is so silky and light it slips straight through my fingers at first. When I loop it round one finger and shake it out, I surmise it is some kind of lingerie. It doesn’t look robust enough to apply the word ‘knickers’ too, though.

“Put them on, then.” Hux is watching, somewhat wolfishly, from the dresser, in which he is rummaging for his own underwear.

“Are you sure they’ll fit?” I’m a little dubious.

Hux’s exasperated sigh spurs me on. I don’t want to incur his wrath, not with that whip still lying on the bed.

They are tiny, virtually transparent, and have nothing but silken string at the back, cutting somewhat uncomfortably between my cheeks. I’ve never worn thongs because I’m sure it would impossible to forget that I’m wearing them. Seems I was right.

“They don’t even look like a garment,” I complain, catching sight of myself in the mirror. “More like someone’s painted some patterns on my skin.”

“Lovely,” insists Hux. “And this one.” He chucks over another package, which proves to be the matching bra. Again, it is whispery-wisp silk; only the slight sensation of having my breasts held a little higher than they would naturally stand informs me that I am wearing a bra at all.

The third package contains a matching suspender belt with lace-topped stockings.

“God, I never wear this kind of fussy frippery,” I remark, struggling to get everything clipped and snapped into place.

“You will do now,” decrees Hux. “You should always wear stockings for me.” He comes closer, and makes me pose in front of the mirror. “Look at yourself. Exquisite.”

I shake my head at myself. Where has this flirty little nymphet come from? It isn’t the woman that was trying to hustle the last few pieces of artwork on the market stall this morning.

He gets a garment shield on a hanger from the wardrobe, then removes the cover to reveal a really beautiful dress. It’s wine red silk with a ruffled deep V-neck and a heavy, side-slit skirt, like a tartier version of a cheongsam.

“I’ll feel like a Disney princess in that. It must have cost a _fortune_.”

“Don’t be vulgar,” he says, offering it to me. “Just put it on, will you? I need to dress myself.”

I step into it. It feels cold and slippery, and it rustles as I pull it up and over my arms. Hux zips it up for me. It wraps itself around me like a lover, clinging tight and accentuating every nuance of my shape.

“Bloody hell. Hello, Jessica Rabbit.” I arch my arms behind my head and watch as my breasts conspire to give me a tavern wench cleavage.

Hux, standing behind me, takes hold of my hips and rubs his face in my drying hair.

“Get out of my sight before I have to get this off you again,” he growls. “Go and sit on the bed or something.”

I sit and watch from a distance as he dresses. Not the holy robes this time; he goes for a white silk shirt which he wears open necked with black dress trousers and shiny, shiny shoes. He has jewelled cufflinks, which I admire from afar.

“What are those?”

“My cufflinks? A diocesan emblem. They were last year’s Christmas present from the Bishop. I have one more thing for you now.”

He opens a drawer and brings out a long rectangular tissue-wrapped box.

“You can call it a Christmas present if you like,” he says, studiedly offhand.

“Oh! I, um…” I clear my throat awkwardly. “I haven’t got you anything. Thought it was a bit soon… I mean, you know. Haven’t had time to get to the shops anyway.”

“I wasn’t expecting anything. You’ve given me quite enough to be getting on with, anyway.”

“Well, so have you,” I say, taking the box and releasing it from its layers of lavender wrapping. “More than enough, really.” I take the lid off. “ _Much_ more than enough,” I amend, staring at the flashing red and white jewels that catch the ever-changing firelight in the room. “This is way too much.”

“Shut up and let me put it on you,” he dismisses, taking it from me and laying it against my collarbones.

“It looks really expensive.”

“It wasn’t. The stones aren’t valuable. Well, not all of them.”

I watch them sparkle in the mirror as I twist my drying hair up into a neat chignon. Hux makes the finishing touches to his outfit as I dash on a bit of make-up, and then we are ready.

He offers his arm.

“Shall we make our entrance?”

“Is anybody there yet?”

“I doubt it. Only the musicians and caterers.”

We move regally from the room – in my case, not so much regally as painfully, since my limbs are still recovering from their ordeal – and towards the stairs.

“So, you said there was an image you wanted to project,” I say, taking the steps in time with him. “What image is that? Sexy vamp? It doesn’t seem very, well, _Deanery_.”

“Just because you’re involved with a clergyman doesn’t mean you have to dress in sackcloth and ashes, my dear. I want the chapter to see that you’ve made an effort for me. Also, I admit, I want them to be a little jealous.”

“Isn’t jealousy supposed to be bad? Thou shalt not covet thy Dean’s…fancy piece… and all that.”

He snorts. “You’re a little more than my fancy piece, I hope.”

“Well, I hope so too, but I don’t like to presume.”

We reach the foot of the stairs. The tree is twinkling, the musicians are warming up with some carols and the tables are laden with tempting little morsels. In the centre of the hall, in front of the tree, a giant silver punch bowl stands, steaming lightly.

“Care for a glass?” Hux ladles some spicy-smelling jewel-red liquid into a cup for me.

“Dutch courage,” I say, knocking it back. “I’m nervous.”

“Nervous of what?”

“Meeting your colleagues. Will the Bishop be coming?”

“I certainly hope so.” Hux pours himself a glass and sips at it. “He promised he would. However, his health is a concern at the moment, so we’ll just have to pray he can keep his promise.”

The doorbell jangles.

“Ah, our first guest.” Hux opens it wide and greets an elderly couple who seem to have brought a tray of mince pies. “Delighted to see you. (Y/n), this is Canon Hugh Meech and his wife, Josephine. Canon, Mrs Meech, this is my, shall we say significant other, (Y/n).”

“Oh! Significant other,” chirps Josephine. “How lovely. We’ve all been hoping the Dean would meet someone nice. And what a stunning dress.”

Exchanges like these are repeated over and over again, as I stand in the chequer-tiled hall shaking hands with endless people, all of whom are much older than Hux or me. I am beamed at, or looked up and down, or blessed by a multitude, all of whom slip into the drawing room muttering to each other in voices designed not to carry to my ears.

I try to pace myself with the wine, but my nerves make me drink far too quickly and, by the time the Archdeacon arrives with Rey, I am all warm and merry inside.

“Hey, Archdeacon,” I greet him, with completely inappropriate familiarity, given that we’ve never really met. “You made it.”

“So did you,” he says, apparently deeply unimpressed. “Mr Dean, could I have a quick word in private? I’ve had a message from the Bishop and…”

They move away out of earshot, their voices buzzing tensely from the corner.

I turn to Rey.

“Looking good,” I say. She is, as well, in a body con bandage dress that shows off her gym-fit physique.

“Thanks. Ben picked it out.”

“Weird – Hux did the same with this dress.”

“Yes.” She frowns, helping herself to punch. “(Y/n)…I don’t know how to put this but…do you get the feeling there’s something _odd_ going on?”

 


	12. Chapter 12

Rey and I take ourselves into a quiet area of the front drawing room, away from the buffet tables and clerical cliques, and sit down together on a chintz chaise longue.

“What do you mean, _odd_?” I ask, although I have a feeling I know what she will say. The same feeling has been dogging me ever since the Archdeacon’s impromptu visit.

“Well, Ben seems very preoccupied with you and Hux,” she opens. “I mean, he spent the whole journey here asking me about you. How long had it been going on, were you having sex, did I think it was love. That sort of thing. I very nearly bit his head off, but then he had a message from the Bishop, which shut him up.”

“Hmm, interesting,” I muse. “Did you know he came here before picking you up tonight? Knocked on the bedroom door – very embarrassing, since I was in there…”

“Oh my God,” Rey splutters into her punch. “You _are_ shagging him, then? Lucky cow. The most action I’ve got from Ben so far is a couple of kisses. He’s very repressed, poor boy.”

“I guess it’s the religious thing.”

“But Hux is religious too.”

“Different strain, perhaps? Non-evangelical. Hux has zero agonies of conscience about indulging in sins of the flesh. Thanks for that, God.” I give the eye in the sky a big thumbs-up.

“Whereas Ben is all ‘not until we’re married’,” moans Rey.

“What? He actually said that? Jeez, you’ve been seeing each other all of five minutes!”

“I know! I really don’t know what to do for the best. I do like him, and I fancy the arse off him, but he’s soooo…ugh, I don’t know. This is mad.”

“Hux told him to be careful not to frighten you off,” I recall. “When he came a-knocking earlier. It was _so_ weird, Rey. He only wanted to let Hux know that he had a girlfriend, and he seemed really gloating about it, as if he knew Hux would be upset to know.”

“Why the hell would Hux even care?”

“That’s what I wondered.” I ponder this, various pieces almost – but not quite – fitting together in my mind. “It’s almost as if they’ve made some kind of bet.”

“What, who can get a girlfriend first?”

“Or something like that.”

Rey shoots to her feet. “Right, this is it,” she says. “I’m going to have it out with him. I will _not_ be betted on.”

“Oh God, it probably isn’t, it was just a thought…”

But I follow her into the vestibule, where Hux and Solo are still deep in somewhat antagonistic confabulation.

“Ben,” she barks, causing them to break off and stare. “I want to ask you something.”

“I want to ask _you_ something,” counters Solo, “but I’m waiting for a more appropriate time, which is not yet.”

She ignores the veiled menace in his tone.

“What’s the rush here?” she says. “I mean, love at first sight probably exists, but I’ve never experienced it yet. Why do you want to take things so fast?”

Ben makes a gesture, almost like wringing his hands, but angrier. Hux hides his smile in his punch glass.

“Rey, why are you doing this? If you want to talk, we can go outside…”

“Did you and Hux make some kind of bet?” she demands.

That wipes the smile off Hux’s face. I get a cold feeling, like a blade twisted between ribs.

“Did we _what_? No, of course not – you know I’m opposed to gambling.”

“He is,” Hux confirms primly. “We both are. Bar the odd charity beetle drive.”

The localised numbness over my heart lifts. It isn’t a bet. Neither of them would bet.

“And now if you’ve finished making a scene,” continues Hux, icily.

Rey backs off, her mouth still in a tight line.

“I still think we need to talk,” she says to Solo, who nods furiously.

“OK, then,” he says, taking her by the arm and striding rapidly into a quiet study away from the main party. “Talk.”

Hux turns to me.

“Did you put her up to that?” he asks.

“What, sowing discord where there was harmony? No. Neither of us are stupid, Hux, despite what you might think. We’re both well aware that something dodgy is going on. I bet you won’t tell me what, though.”

“As I’ve said, I don’t bet.”

I make a sound of inchoate frustration.

“Why is the Archdeacon so keen to rub his relationship in your face, Hux?”

“Are you accusing me of something?”

“Hux, just…”

There’s a general kerfuffle over by the door, and Hux leaps away from me like a startled gazelle to add himself to the number.

“My Lord,” he says, his voice rising above the murmur of the crowd. “We are all delighted you could make it.”

This must be the Bishop! I peer through the press of bodies and see a most unprepossessing figure, hunched and wizened, leaning heavily on a pair of carers.

“Make some space, please.” Hux is officious, waving people out of the way and leading the Bishop and his entourage through the hall. “We have a sofa reserved for you in the drawing room.”

As he limps along, the sound of raised voices – Ben’s and Rey’s – from the side room filters through. Hux looks immeasurably satisfied as he apologises to the Bishop for them.

“I’m afraid the Archdeacon might be experiencing some trouble in paradise,” he says smoothly, leading the Bishop towards the sofa.

“Oh?” The Bishop has a ghastly rasp in place of a voice. “He told me marriage was in the offing.”

“I think he was getting a little ahead of himself, my Lord. Here we are.”

The Bishop is helped down on to the very chaise longue Rey and I had sat on whilst attempting to put two and two together.

“Can I get you anything, my Lord? Something to eat or drink?”

“Water will be sufficient, thank you,” says the Bishop. “But Mr Dean, first of all…”

Hux turns from his errand, expectant.

“My Lord?”

“I should like to meet your young lady.”

His _young lady_. Something makes me want to hang back, to refuse to be paraded like some kind of prize – which I’m beginning to suspect I am – but Hux seizes me by the elbow and guides me forward with subtle but irresistible force.

“Allow me to present Miss (Y/n) (L/n),” he says, running his fingertips gently along my side and over my hip as if to show off my figure in the dress.

“How do you do?” I say loudly, prickling at the feeling that I am here to be shown rather than engaged with.

“She looks healthy,” says the Bishop bafflingly, ignoring me. “A very fine choice, Mr Dean. I wish you both well.”

I step back. This guy is making my flesh crawl and I need a drink.

Over by the punch bowl I bump into Phasma, apparently fully recovered and well on her way to her next hangover.

“Chin chin,” she says, pouring me a cup. “So what did the Bishop have to say?”

“He said I was _healthy._ What the hell did he mean by that?”

“Good breeding stock,” says Phasma.

“ _What_?”

“Listen,” she says, lowering her voice so it’s only a few decibels above industrial machinery level. “I’m not s’posed to know this. But I overheard Hux and Solo the other night, at each other’s throats, and…the thing is…”

“What?” I hold my breath. Do I want to hear this?

“You really like him, don’t you?”

I try to keep my exasperation in check and prevent myself from screaming ‘Just tell me!’

“Yes, I do. But I’m feeling really uneasy about it all tonight. I thought we had something good. Was I wrong? Do you know?”

“He really likes you,” she confirms. A few of my taut muscles relax, though others remain on duty.

“Has he said so?”

“I know Hux. Way he looks at you. And he’s never nice to people, but he’s sweet with you. People keep commenting that he’s been in a really good mood lately. So he must really like you.”

I wonder if she’d think he was so sweet with me if she knew what we get up to in the bedroom. But I let that pass. I’m starting to breathe again.

“But?” I prompt.

“I’m not saying you wouldn’t have got together anyway. Maybe you would. Since promotion to Dean, Hux hasn’t had a lot of spare time for the dating game. Too deep in internecine chapter politics. I thought it was a bit strange that he’d chosen one of the busiest times of the cathedral year to suddenly start putting it about. Not to mention Solo – I’ve been trying to crack that boy all year. Bit put out, to be honest with you. What’s she got that I haven’t?”

“He’ll probably be on the market again tomorrow. Anyway, you were saying?”

“OK, so I thought it was just a romantic coincidence that Hux and Solo were suddenly all loved up so quickly. Until I overheard this morning…”

“What, what?”

“The Bishop is on his last legs. He’s on the verge of ill-health retirement, or the more permanent thing, if you catch my drift. He’s promised to put in a word for either Hux or Solo with the General Synod as his favoured successor, but he doesn’t want to put forward a single man. Thinks the Synod won’t go for it, they like to appoint a Bishop with a wife. Or a husband, but Winbury’s a bit conservative like that, not likely to be happy with a female or a gay bishop.”

“Are you serious?”

“Deadly. I think it’s stupid myself but what can I say, I’m just a verger.”

“So – you think Hux is grooming me to be Mrs Bishop? And it’s all calculated?”

Phasma shrugs. “Sorry to be the bearer and all that. As I say, there’s no guarantee you wouldn’t have got together anyway…”

“And the same goes for the Archdeacon and Rey?”

Phasma dips her cup back in the punchbowl, belching in reply.

“Sorry, mate.”

“Not as sorry as…oh my God. I don’t believe this!”

I think about going to confront Hux, but I can’t face a showdown, nor can I trust myself not to burst into tears in front of the entire chapter.

As I am trying to get my shattered wits back together, Rey comes storming out of the side room.

“Where’s my coat? I’m out of here,” she fumes.

The Archdeacon follows her.

“No, look, don’t go, you don’t understand…”

“Oh, I understand perfectly, Ben. Thanks for selecting me as your foothold on the climbing wall of ambition. I’m flattered, but I can think of better ways to spend my life. Goodbye and have a very merry bloody Christmas.”

“But Rey…I love you, Rey.”

She bursts into sarcastic laughter and makes a beeline for the door.

“I’m coming with you,” I tell her, grabbing my own coat and hurrying to her side.

“Wait till you hear what’s been going on,” she mutters to me as we sweep through the front door.

“I already know,” I tell her.

We link arms and stride out across the cathedral close as the first flakes of snow skirl out of the bitter sky.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy that this story is being read and enjoyed, despite the somewhat niche AU! Thank you all for the much-needed encouragement. And now...it's Christmas Day! That came around quickly...

I wake up, half on and half off the bed with my face shoved on top of my mobile phone. Rey is lying on a duvet on the floor. She is snoring like a felled wildebeest, if felled wildebeests snore. I’d have to look it up.

Emitting an alluring glow from a few feet away is a half-drunk bottle of mineral water. I slide gingerly from the bed and crawl to this bottle, downing its contents within seconds.

There is a white glare from the window, whose curtains I didn’t get around to drawing last night, and the sky is a mild reflective grey.

“Unbelievable, I think we have a white Christmas,” I mutter to myself, rousing Rey from her slumbers.

“You what? Oh God. What is going on?”

“How much did we have to drink last night?”

“Ugggghhhh, don’t even want to think…” She drags herself into a sitting position. “Well, Merry Christmas anyway.” She reaches for her bag and draws out a soft wrapped package.

I open a hand-knitted beret with matching scarf and gloves.

“Aw, that’s really cute. Thanks. My winter will suck a bit less with these on my extremities.” I sigh. “Not sure I should give you mine any more.”

“Oh, go on.”

“Well, all right, but I don’t think you’ll have much use for it. Except as a cautionary type of thing, perhaps.”

I pull a ribbon-tied scroll from my drawer. Rey unrolls it and shakes her head, half-smiling ruefully.

“I would have _loved_ this yesterday,” she says, turning it round to show me the scene of her and Ben in a romantic lovers’ bower full of flowers and birds and hearts. Took me hours to paint as well. What a waste.

“Yeah, well, maybe I’ll come up with something else for you.” I put my hand to my neck. The jewels are still lying heavily against my collarbones. “Got a necklace going spare.”

“Shit.” She laughs ruefully. “What a disaster.”

“I’ll have to go and give these back to him sometime,” I say, wanting to vomit at the idea. “But maybe not today.”

“No, not today,” says Rey firmly. “It’s Christmas. We’re going to shower, change and head down to the Bishop’s Arms for a massive fry-up and gallons of strong coffee.”

“Is it open today?”

“You bet. It’s the Charity Santa Race at midday – they open for breakfast and do a roaring trade every year.”

“Can’t we just lie here and moan and clutch our heads in front of the Queen’s speech?” I plead.

“No. Come on, (L/n). We are going to get festive.”

*

The Bishop’s Arms is heaving with people in red tunics, Santa hats and running shoes.

The cathedral is visible from our table. At midday, people stream from the left and right sides of the great West Door; the sign that late morning Eucharist is over and the Dean is officially on the loose until Evensong.

“A bit close for comfort,” I say nervously.

“Hey, I see what you did there,” says Rey, knocking back her third coffee. “Too ‘Close’ for comfort. Because we’re in the cathedral close. Good one.”

“Aren’t you worried Ben is going to come looking for you? Because I really don’t think Hux is just going to let this go. I haven’t dared turn my phone back on after the first three missed calls last night.”

“Oh, he’ll be over at the Bishop’s Palace eating turkey and pulling crackers and all that. Ben said something about being invited over for lunch. I think we’re safe for the moment. Come on, let’s go and watch the race.”

We stand with our feet in thick snow, watching the Santas trying to sprint over the hardening ground without falling on their jolly arses. Once the main body of the crowd has turned the corner around the cathedral and is heading to the water meadows beyond, Rey and I decide to make a snowman.

We are clutching our stomachs and shrieking with laughter at the Snow-Dean and Snow-Archdeacon we have made when a hearty female voice hails us from a few yards away.

“Oh, Phasma,” I say, my stomach plunging down to my knees. “Hi. Merry Christmas.”

“To you too,” she says. “Listen, are you busy right now?”

“Who’s asking?” says Rey warily.

“Just little old me,” she assures us. “I going to try and prevail on your selflessness and sense of charity at this season of goodwill.”

I start to dig into my handbag, but she stops me.

“No, no, I’m not asking for money. I’m in charge of our annual Christmas meal for elderly and lonely members of the congregation. We’re down in the crypt, about to serve up, but we could really, really use a couple more volunteers. We’re absolutely inundated! I think every widowed pensioner in the county has shown up.”

“Sure,” says Rey. “You just need a couple of hands to ladle gravy or whatever, I take it?”

“Exactly. So you’ll help out?”

“Could be just what we need to take our minds off…other things,” I agree. “Why the hell not?”

“You’re saving my life, ladies.” She claps us both on the back, causing me to cough, and leads off towards the cathedral.

It is good to be busy and feel virtuous at the same time. Rey and I get stuck in, serving up the turkey dinners and joining in with the carol singalong, until a minor canon rushes in and says something in Phasma’s ear that causes her to turn pale.

“Look, I’m really sorry,” she says, bustling up to us. “But something serious has come up and I’m going to have to head over to the chapter house. Can you man the barricades for me? I’ve promised charades…”

Rey and I exchange anxious looks.

“You’ll be OK. Hilda and Ron will stay with you – they’ve done it all before. Pretty please. We have to lock up in an hour anyway.”

“Can I just go to the loo first?” I request. “I’ll be five minutes.”

“OK, I’ll wait here. Rey, have you got the brandy butter for the Christmas puds? It’s all stashed under that table over there…”

I head upstairs, finding myself alone in the vastness of the cathedral.

It is like a different building, without the constant milling of tourists and staff along the aisles, and heads bowed in prayer along the front pews.

I stand at the top of the nave, absorbing its chilly splendour, feeling the way I might feel on the day of judgement when called to account for myself.

“I do my best,” I whisper to the distant altar screen.

A dark figure flits across the front of the altar, then turns suddenly, registering my presence.

To my horror, I see that it is Hux.

My instinct is to take flight – he is a long way away, after all – but my feet will not act. Instead I stand my ground as if glued to it while he comes down from the chancel and strides swiftly towards me along the central nave.

“(Y/n),” he says urgently as soon as he is close enough to be audible, his voice echoing around the vast chamber. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to get hold of you all night and day.”

“What, so you could announce our surprise engagement in front of the bishop?” I say bitterly.

“What on earth are you on about?” He is close enough now for me to see the angry set of his jaw.

“Well, that’s the plan, isn’t it? Beat the Archdeacon to a big announcement and get the bishop’s blessing as his successor. I’m not some kind of tool for you to use to get nearer the Palace, Hux. I won’t be used. I really thought…” My voice cracks and I have to fight back a pathetic impulse to start crying.

He stops short a few feet from me and stares. His face is so white he looks like one of the marble statues lying on the tombs scattered about the place.

“You thought _what_?” he hisses.

“I thought it was…real. What went on between us. I’ve been a dupe, and it’s not a nice feeling.”

He takes a sharp breath, as if preventing himself from acting impulsively, and shuts his eyes a moment.

When he opens them, his voice is calmer, although this clearly costs him some effort.

“(Y/n), I think we need to talk. Come.”

He reaches for my arm. I flinch out of his range, but he swoops forward and grabs me. I am marched unceremoniously all the way up the nave.

“I’m supposed to be playing charades with the pensioners in the crypt,” I mention, trying to pull away from him without success.

“I’m sure the pensioners in the crypt can manage without you,” he says tartly. “My need is greater than theirs at present.”

We move behind the chancel into the quire. He draws me towards the empty choir stalls and sits me down in one, after removing a quantity of empty Quality Street wrappers from under the cushion.

“I must have words with the Precentor,” he mutters, stuffing them in his pocket. “These choristers are getting quite unruly.”

I gaze dully up at him as he looms above me, folding his arms.

“So I gather you’ve been making some assumptions, (Y/n),” he says with icy calm. “Would you care to explain?”

“ _I’m_ the one that’s owed an explanation!”

“Oh, really? You walk out on me on Christmas Eve without a word, switch off your phone, refuse to answer any of my messages, yet you’re owed an explanation. Well, perhaps if you were at all contactable, you might have had one.”

“What the hell do you expect?” I shout, mentally apologising for using such language in the house of the Lord. “I found out everything between us was a stupid charade to try and get the bishop’s favour. What was the plan? You were hoping he might die before you actually had to propose? Would you have actually gone through with it? And just lied to me for…however long…”

I run out of steam, my breath coming too fast and too often for further speech.

“Well, isn’t that nice?” sneers Hux, bending his face to mine. “What an opinion of me you have.”

“For God’s sake…”

“Listen,” he hisses. “Everything you have assumed is wrong. There is one man in this diocese in a tearing hurry to convince the Bishop he is on the verge of marriage, and that man is not me.”

I am struck dumb. Does he seriously think he can gaslight his way out of trouble?

“The Archdeacon,” I say after a thunderous silence.

“The Archdeacon,” he says, nodding. “Yes.”

“But you… Things between us happened so fast. You can’t tell me…”

Hux chews on his lip, looking up at the back stalls for a moment.

“All right,” he says. “I was a little…provocative. I might have been playing with Solo a bit.”

“Playing with him?”

“(Y/n), I am under no illusions about ever winning this bishopric. It won’t go to me, no matter what the Bishop says to the Synod, because Deans don’t become Bishops. The hierarchy simply doesn’t work that way. Deans become Deans, and then…they retire. I was never in the running.”

“So…what…?”

“The Bishop will give his endorsement to Solo, if Solo can get himself a steady girlfriend. That’s my understanding. But I may have led him to believe that, if I get a girlfriend first, the Bishop won’t grant the endorsement.”

“You were trolling him, basically?”

“If that’s what they call it.” Hux looks almost apologetic. “I never intended for it to cause these crossed wires…”

“But that’s even worse. You were using me to play some infantile game with your playground enemy.”

“No, (Y/n), no I wasn’t. The way things worked out was just a coincidence. Serendipitous. I couldn’t resist a little bit of fun at Solo’s expense…and for that, I’m sorry. I should have resisted. I won’t say the devil made me do it, but it wasn’t my finest hour, and I do repent it now, most sincerely.”

“Then…are you saying…you would have gone out with me anyway?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“And you expect me to believe that?”

I half-rise from my seat, but he pushes me back down with a hand on my shoulder.

“I can prove it,” he says. “I no longer have any reason to pretend anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Solo and I must act freely and according to our consciences from now on.”

“Why?”

“Because, my dear, the Bishop is dead.”

 


	14. Chapter 14

“The Bishop…is dead?” I repeat stupidly. “You mean…he’s _dead_?”

“I thought my statement was unequivocal enough,” says Hux.

“When? I mean – he was at your house just last night.”

“I’m aware of that. A very uncomfortable and unpleasant night for me.” He gives me a hard stare. “He came to church this morning to perform Morning Eucharist – insisted on doing it, despite his ill health and my offer to stand in for him. But it must have been too much for him because by the time the turkey was carved at the Palace dining table, he was gone.”

“Heart?”

“Stroke, I believe. We can’t be certain as yet.”

“Wow. Well…I’m sorry…I guess. Are you OK? Were you there? Did you see it happen?”

“I was there,” he says, looking around the quire as if fearing we might be overheard. “Most of the chapter were.”

“So what happens now?”

“We make our recommendations to the Crown and await the naming of his successor.”

“Which won’t be you?”

“Which, as I have said, will not be me.”

I sit back, considering all this.

“Would you like to be Bishop?”

“Of Winbury? Not really.”

“Of somewhere else then?” I frown at him, noticing the evasion.

“I couldn’t stay in Winbury if that imbecile was crowned Bishop anyway,” he said. “Not that he will be. The whole world would have to have gone mad. However, just in case the unthinkable happens, I have been keeping an eye on the _Church Times_.”

“You’re looking for a new job?”

“I’m looking for a place where I can progress. As I’ve said, as Dean, I can only retire. If I manage to land myself a decent Archdeaconry, on the other hand…”

“So you’re leaving anyway. So what was all this? I really don’t understand.”

He holds out a hand.

“Come to the Deanery. We can talk properly there.”

“But the pensioners…?”

“The pensioners can go to hell. Forgive me, Lord,” he adds quickly. “Come _on_ , (Y/n), I’ve had as much recalcitrant behaviour as I can take from you.”

He grasps my hand and yanks me out of the choir stall.

I find myself unwilling to break free, so I trot along to the Deanery in his wake, through the hardening snow.

The giant Christmas tree that I decorated stands proudly in the hall. In the drawing rooms, there are still some signs of the previous night’s party. I look at the sofa where the Bishop sat and marvel at how quickly things can change.

“Do you want a drink?” asks Hux tersely, pouring himself some brandy from a decanter.

“No, I really, really _don’t._ I had far too much last night. Drowning my sorrows.”

“So,” says Hux, seating himself beside me. “Describe these sorrows for me.”

“You know…”

“I want to be clear.”

“I was upset because I thought you and Solo were using Rey and me to get closer to a promotion. That we were just the first idiots who fell for it. I felt like a complete fool.”

“But of course, you’d get over it quickly enough,” he prompts. “Because it hadn’t exactly been long-term.”

“No, I don’t think I’d get over it that quickly actually,” I contradict him. “Maybe you might, but for me…”

I don’t want to tell him how special he is to me; how our rapid and unconventional connection had given me hopes far beyond what you’d expect from a couple of dates.

“You think I would just let you go and chalk it up to experience?” he says.

“I don’t know. I’m not you.”

“Thank heaven for that.” His lips twitch. I try to smile back, but I’m too anxious. What is he going to say? “(Y/n), if you are hoping that I’ll leave things here and let you go, you are going to be disappointed. I have no intention of giving you up.”

“Not even for Lent?” The jokey remark covers the wild thrill his words have given me.

“No, I’m thinking of going for caffeine this year.” He pauses. “You, on the other hand, will be staying with me.”

“Do I get a choice in that?”

“No.”

I can’t look away from him. He puts down his glass and takes my hands in his.

“I’ve already invested far too much in this – in you,” he says. “Do you think I stumble every day across women who like me?”

I shake my head, smiling reluctantly.

“No, let alone women I _want_ to like me,” he says. “And do you know what the odds are against stumbling across a woman who likes me, and whom I like back, _and_ to whom I can do all the perverted things I’ve done to you? Probably several million to one, at a conservative estimate.”

“Well, yeah, those were roughly the sorrows I was drowning with such excessive enthusiasm,” I admit. “Just when I thought I’d found my dream kinky man…”

“You made a false assumption and nearly ruined it for both of us.” He squeezes my hands. “The reason I took things so fast was because I didn’t want yet _another_ long period of dating that ended in disappointment in the bedroom. I’ve done that too many times now. I prefer to be honest about my tastes from the outset.”

“I’m glad you were,” I say. “Oh dear. I’ve got this all wrong. I’m sorry. But what about Rey? Did Ben ever really care for her?”

“I think he likes her a lot, yes,” says Hux. “But I think the weight of expectations might have crushed that little romance before too long anyway. He has a terrible tendency to idealise. An actual real woman is bound to disappoint him in the end.”

“He was freaking Rey out a bit with all the wedding talk. I wonder if she’ll give him another chance. Perhaps if he isn’t made Bishop, that might be the best result for them as a couple. They might get to know each other properly, without all the manipulation and manoeuvring.” I sigh. “I wish you hadn’t used me as something to goad him with, though.”

“So do I,” confesses Hux. “It was childish of me. Our professional relationship has been so antagonistic for so long that it’s become a kind of second nature to wind him up as much as I can.”

“That’s mean.”

“Sadistic, even,” he says, with a glint in his eye.

“I should run away from you very fast.”

“You’ve already tried that. I don’t recommend it.” He leans into me and I make no move to resist as he fixes his lips upon mine. “I’ll always catch up with you,” he whispers into my ear.

He is demonstrating how thoroughly he has caught up with me by pushing me on to my back on the sofa and kissing me as if my lips give him some kind of vital life force when the phone rings.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he curses, fishing it out of his trouser pocket. “Sorry, would ignore it, but the whole dead Bishop thing…”

I lie back, enjoying the languid, sensual feel of being here on this couch with swollen kissed lips while he paces around the room muttering into his phone.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his face genuinely pained, putting his phone away again. “I’m going to have to go over to the chapter house. It’s in uproar.”

“I ought to go back to the cathedral,” I remember suddenly. Poor pensioners. I hope they got their game of charades. Rey will be wondering where the hell I am too.

“All right then. But I want you back here after Evensong,” he says. “We have some unfinished business to attend to.”

“Do we?” I rise and try to fix my hair in front of a mirror hanging over the mantelpiece.

“Yes we do.” He stands behind me, snaking his arms around me, and kisses my neck. “Do you really think I was going to let you get away with running out on me like that? Hmm?”

“Uh oh.” Pleasurable tremors flicker around my body. This sounds promising.

“Six thirty, on the dot,” he commands, catching my lips for a proper goodbye. “Late arrival is not recommended.”

*

“Where the _hell_ were you?”

Rey brandishes a pan scourer at me, the soapy suds spattering my top.

The last few stragglers are pulling off their paper crowns and putting their cracker gifts in their handbags. The tables look as if they’ve had a brief visit from an airborne bombing squad.

“Sorry. Got sidetracked.”

“In the toilets? Are you ill?”

“No…bumped into someone.” I grab a tea towel, trying to keep my guilty face turned away from her.

“Someone?” she says sharply, then, when I don’t answer, “Red hair? Nasty attitude? Huge great house in the cathedral close? By any chance?”

I sigh and face her.

“I had the wrong end of the stick, Rey.”

“Oh God, he’s sweet-talked you back into his clutches, hasn’t he?”

I laugh. “I bet no-one’s accused Hux of being a sweet talker before. He just told me the truth of what had been going on with him, that’s all, and it wasn’t the same as what was going on with Ben.”

Rey groans and bends over the sink, staring into the washing up water.

“He’s really got you right where he wants you, hasn’t he?”

“Rey, listen. The Bishop’s dead.”

She straightens, staring.

“Seriously?”

“That’s why Phasma had to leave. He pegged it whilst carving the turkey apparently.”

“Oh my God.”

“So all that stuff about recommending a successor is out of the window now. He can’t do it. He’s too dead. And for what Hux’s opinion is worth, the committee aren’t likely to elect Ben as his successor anyway.”

“Good,” she says. “He doesn’t deserve it. But neither does Hux!”

“Hux has absolutely no plans to be Bishop of Winbury.”

“Oh, he tells _you_ that.”

“He means it. He’s been looking for other posts, out of the diocese. He says Deans are never made Bishop anyway. He wants an Archdeaconry of his own, so he can work up to another bishopric somewhere else.”

“Right, yeah, whatever.”

“ _Rey_!”

My expostulation coincides with another voice speaking her name, a deeper one, from further away.

We both lean with our backs against the draining board as Ben Solo advances into the room.

“Rey, can I talk to you?” he says. His demeanour is sombre, I could almost say dignified. It seems to impress Rey anyway.

“I heard about the bishop,” she says quickly. “Sorry. That must have been a shock.”

“We all knew his health was bad,” says Ben. “But the timing wasn’t great, no. At Christmas lunch.”

She nods. I know she’s struggling between the urge to be biting and bitter and the kinder option of treating him as a man who has suffered a recent and sudden loss. He does seem a lot more upset than Hux was.

“Will you let me explain myself to you?” he asks again. He seems so lost, so forlorn, that I can’t see how she can refuse.

“Ben,” she sighs. “You’ve been such a fool.”

“I know,” he says. “But if I have to lose you now…”

“All right,” she says, handing me the pot scourer. “I’m giving you twenty minutes.”

 


	15. Chapter 15

It’s six thirty.

I’m standing outside the Deanery, shivering out of my skin. It’s snowing again, and dark, but a light glows from an upstairs window, which makes me shiver even more as I wonder what might be in store for me up there.

I ring the bell, looking back to the cathedral as I do so. Rey and Ben’s ‘twenty minutes’ hasn’t ended yet. I wonder if this means a blissful reunion or a murder has taken place.

When Hux answers the door he is all in black – black high-collared shirt and slim fitting trousers – but his feet are bare. I guess the central heating in the Deanery must be good.

He reaches out, takes my hand and draws me inside without a word. I prickle with nerves and desire as he puts a hand on my shoulder and steers me towards the stairs, still in silence.

“H-have you heard from Ben?” I ask, trying to break the growing tension.

“I don’t want to talk about him tonight,” says Hux. “Tonight, there is nobody but me and you.”

He walks me across the landing and into his bedroom.

It looks normal. There is nothing alarming lying on the bed, or anywhere else. Yet.

“So,” I say, with unconvincing brightness. “What’s the plan?”

He spins me round and gets me in a dancer’s hold, one arm around my waist, the other holding my hand up between our chests. For a wild minute, I think he’s going to waltz with me, but instead he bends to whisper into my ear.

“That’s for me to know, (Y/n), and you to find out.”

He kisses me, not enough, but then nothing would be enough. It’s a kiss that brings us back together after the stormy interim, and the heavy gloom that has sat on my shoulders all day lifts like magic.

“Now, then,” he says, his forehead against mine. “You owe me an apology, and then I owe you a lesson.”

I gulp, wanting to whine that he isn’t being fair, but knowing that this will earn me precisely zero points with him.

“I’m sorry I drew the obvious conclusion,” I say, which is probably not much better.

“Excuse me?” His eyes glitter dangerously. “I don’t think that will do.”

I take a breath and shut my eyes.

“OK. I’m sorry I thought badly of you. I misjudged you. I’ll have more trust in you in future.”

“That’s not all,” he prompts softly. “What about the way you walked out on me?”

“Oh God. OK. I should have come to talk to you first.”

“You should _always_ talk to me first,” he says severely. “If anything at all is troubling you. Is that clear?”

“Mm hmm.” Shame overwhelms me. I feel rotten, and like an idiot.

“Well, it will be by the time I’m finished with you,” he says lightly, then he kisses me again, longer and ravishingly.

The hand that was gripping mine releases me and travels down to my bottom, patting it lightly.

“How are your bruises?” he whispers.

“Er…still there…I think. Not too bad.”

“Good.”

I clench my buttocks. Surely he isn’t going to let loose with that riding crop again? The bruises might be healing, but I don’t think I’m quite ready…

“Anyway, let’s get you undressed first,” he says, unwinding my scarf and getting to work on my coat buttons. Soon he has me out of my outerwear, and my boots, jeans and jumper don’t last much longer.

When I stand before him in my underwear, I blush horribly because I went back home and changed into my best set especially for him, and I imagine he realises this.

“Lovely,” he approves, looking me up and down. He pulls me against him, swiftly and tightly, and kisses me once more. “Go and sit on the bed.”

He sends me on my way with a startling smack to my behind that makes me squeak.

I sit cross-legged on the bed and watch him open his ominous wardrobe. _Please not the riding crop_ , I pray, and my prayers are answered, because he comes out with a box that isn’t long enough to contain that particular weapon of woe.

“Now, you’ve dressed up very nicely for me,” he says, “but I have a few little extras in here. First of which is…”

He opens the box and takes out a length of wide black satin. For a moment, I think he means to tie me up again, but instead he sits behind me and wraps it around my head, covering my eyes.

“Oh God, a blindfold,” I blurt.

“Somebody needs to learn to trust,” he says, securing it tightly so that I can see nothing. “This is an excellent teaching resource.”

“It’s a scary teaching resource.”

“The best ones usually are. Now, I want you kneeling back on your heels.”

I obey without question, my heart pounding hard. I wish I could see what he was doing. Is this going to involve pain?

I hear him reach into the box. It sounds like a jewellery box, with a silvery sound of metal on metal as he rummages – maybe some plastic beads in there as well.

I gasp as he yanks down the cups of my bra to free my nipples. Instinctively, I put out a hand to protect myself.

“No, (Y/n),” he says. “Do you trust me?”

I let out the breath I’m holding. It’s not an easy question, but I know how I have to reply.

“Yes,” I say.

“Then you won’t mind putting your hands behind your back, will you?”

Chewing my lip, I clasp my fingers together in the way he wants, feeling my breasts jut further out. My nipples are hard in the cold bedroom air and they feel so vulnerable that I fear for them.

As it happens, I am right to do so. Hux cups one breast in his hand and uses his thumb to get my nipple even fuller and stiffer.

“Ready now,” he whispers. “Hold tight.”

My fingers fly apart as something very cold is placed against the edge of my nipple.

“Keep those hands out of the way,” he says sternly. “Or I’ll have to add to your punishment. Keep still. This will be a little uncomfortable…”

More coldness materialises on the other side of my nipple, then there is a mild pressure that soon becomes less mild. I cry out but Hux simply pinches harder, until I begin to realise that it is not unbearably painful and I can endure it.

“Good,” he says, and lets go. The clamp feels heavy – there is something dangling from it, some kind of pretty adornment, I imagine. “Now the other side…”

He repeats the process, and I behave better this time, the symmetry of it providing a crumb of surprising relief.

“Beautiful,” he says happily. “How does it feel?”

“Sore,” I moan.

“Well, that’s as it should be then. Now…”

He puts his hand between my shoulder blades, nudging my upper half down so that my face is pressed into the bedspread and my bottom is high in the air. My nipples graze the fabric, and in their oversensitised state it is almost too much.

Hux pulls my knickers down to my knees. His hands caress my bottom, prodding where the bruises are. I tense, waiting for a smack that doesn’t come. Instead, he spreads my cheeks and strokes the sensitive skin he finds in the crease.

“Has anyone ever…?” he asks, his thumb tip moving towards the darkest recesses.

My face flares with raging heat. Oh God, this is mortifying!

“No,” I reply.

“No what?” He pinches a bruise. “Let’s have a little respect, shall we?”

“Ow! No, sir.”

“And is that because you don’t want to, or because the subject never came up?”

“Um, kind of…never came up, really.”

“And if it had?”

“I…don’t know…”

“You’re not sure about it? Why not?”

“It seems so… depraved.”

“Yes, well, that’s the allure of it, don’t you think?”

“You seem to think so, sir.”

“I certainly do. Have you ever thought about it?”

“Um, well, now and again, sir.”

“So you’re not violently averse to the idea?”

“I…could probably…in theory…Oh God, I don’t know! Wouldn’t it hurt?”

“Not much, if it’s done properly. I mean, it has to hurt a little, (Y/n), otherwise it’s not worth doing. I suppose it hurt when you lost your virginity, didn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I recall, grimacing. I wouldn’t really want to go through that again.

“But presumably it was worth it, or you wouldn’t be here now.”

“I suppose, sir.”

“And you trust me, don’t you?”

I swallow hard. “Yes, sir.”

“So if I tell you it’ll be worth it, you believe me. Yes?”

A pause. “Yes, sir.”

He takes pity on me, laughing and patting my bottom.

“I’ll give you some time to get used to the idea,” he says. “Besides, you’ll need some preparation.”

“What sort of preparation?”

He moves long fingers between my legs, rubbing their tips into my copious juices.

“Not _too_ much, perhaps,” he says, clearing his throat. “If even talking about it turns you on.”

I push myself back, grinding on to his fingers, but he moves them away with cruel swiftness.

“Not yet,” he says. “First things first.”

The next thing I feel is something feathery light and tickly, trailing over my bum and legs. It is pleasant and buttery-soft, a treat instead of a trick.

Until he pulls it away and flicks the little strands down on my backside. It makes an impact that is not quite painful but certainly attention-grabbing.

“Oh! What’s that, sir?”

“I didn’t think I could use anything too hard on you,” he said, “since you’re still bruised. But a flogger could work very well. Builds up slowly, stings but doesn’t bruise, will get you nice and red before you know it. Hold your position, now. Don’t move.”

He begins to swish the thing down in earnest. What starts as a caress moves inexorably into a growing warmth, and then the sting kicks in. It takes a few minutes, but eventually I am gasping and jerking around all over the place in a doomed attempt to save my cheeks and thighs from more of this treatment.

“That’s your arse nicely coloured in,” he said, flicking and swishing downwards. “But what about…?”

I yelp as he aims it squarely between my legs, making my clit burn.

“Trust,” he reminds me as I try to shut my thighs.

It’s very, very hard, but I manage to keep them open, my fists clenched, my teeth gritted, everything on the defensive. Two more searing strokes, and he puts the thing aside and reaches again for my clit, which is throbbing now, and as desperate for his touch as it has ever been.

He uses his fingers to bring me to the edge of an orgasm, then removes them, repeating this process three times before I tell him I can’t take any more.

“OK,” he says. “One more test, and then I’ll call us quits. Keep that red bottom high for me, (Y/n).”

He spreads my cheeks and moves one finger in between them. The finger is thickly coated in some kind of viscous substance which I take to be lubricant. It feels cold at first, when he presses it against my tight opening, and I squirm, but he pats my hip gently with his other hand, waiting for me calm before screwing it very slowly and carefully deeper.

It is hard to keep still with such a strange invasive pressure where no invasive pressure should be, but he holds me, first at the waist, then at the shoulder, then, once he has pushed through the first resistance and has about an inch of finger inside me, he unbuckles his belt, releases himself from his trousers and pushes his cock into my vagina.

Still twisting his finger and pushing it further, he starts to thrust, with long firm strokes at first, then faster and harder, adding another finger so that I gasp with guilty pleasure-pain. The double penetration, along with my heated cheeks and throbbing nipples, throws me into such a powerful vortex of erotic sensation that I feel as if I might be going mad.

“ _You_ ,” he says through gritted teeth, “are all mine. Do you feel it?”

“Yes, yes, oh I do, yes.”

He slams into me, slapping up against my sore flogged thighs and bottom, his fingers hooked fast inside me, my nipples chafing on the bed with every back-and-forth jolt.

I know exactly how it feels to be owned. And I know exactly how it feels to be taken over the edge of reason by the man who owns me. I can’t move, or speak, or see – even after the blindfold is taken off – for minutes afterwards.

“So you won’t be running out on me again, then?” he asks, once we regain minimum functionality.

“I won’t,” I whisper. “I promise.”

“Good. I foresee a happy new year for both of us.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all folks! Hope you enjoyed it. Pretty sure Hux will get to be a bishop one day, and maybe Ben will too - especially if Rey sticks around to ground him. Thanks for reading xxx


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